path: root/77071-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77071 ***

[Transcriber's note: This article has been extracted and prepared from
_The Geographical Journal_, v. 56, 1920.]




  THE EXPLORATION OF TIBESTI, ERDI, BORKOU, AND ENNEDI IN 1912-1917: A
        Mission entrusted to the Author by the French Institute

      Lieut.-Colonel Jean Tilho, Gold Medallist of the R.G.S. 1919


 _Read at the Meeting of the Society, 19 January 1920. Map following p.
                                 160._

[_Note: The names in the text are spelled in accordance with the
manuscript of Colonel Tilho, a few of the principal names—as Chad—in
their English form, but the greater number in the French transliteration
of Arabic. On the accompanying map the names are transliterated
according to the G.S.G.S. rules for transposing from the French to the
British system. The retention of the French spelling in the text has the
double advantage of familiarizing the student with the two systems, and
of preserving in some degree the character of the lecture, which was
delivered in French._—ED. _G.J._]


=1. Object of the Mission.=


BEFORE I begin my lecture, allow me to express once more, in your
presence, my heartfelt gratitude to the Council of the Royal
Geographical Society for the high recompense accorded me on the occasion
of my last journey in Central Africa.

It is of this journey, its chief incidents, and most important results,
that I am about to have the honour of giving some account. Let me first
of all explain to you, in a few words, what, from a geographical point
of view, was the object of my expedition.

Explorations in Central Africa, made during the second half of the
nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth, had left
unsolved a very interesting problem: it had been noticed that the level
of vast stretches of desert, several hundred miles north-east of Lake
Chad, were considerably lower than that of the lake—the difference
amounting in some places to 260 feet; besides this, a wide continuous
trench, offering the appearance of an old valley—the Bahr El Ghazal—led
from the lake to this low-lying ground, and seemed to stretch far away
to the north-east, between the mountain groups of Tibesti and Ennedi. On
proceeding towards the north-east, an increasing analogy is to be
noticed between the malacological fauna of the Chad basin and that of
the Nile. Besides which there had been found recently, in the waters of
the Chad, a shrimp till then only found in the Nile basin—the _Palæmon
Niloticus_, Roux. In short, all these signs appeared to confirm the
supposition that the basin of the Chad was not a closed basin, but
belonged to that of the Nile, and was a former affluent of the old river
on whose banks had sprung up and flourished one of the most brilliant
and ancient civilizations of the world.

This was the hypothesis that the French Institute wished to have
investigated, and in the early part of 1912 I had the honour to be
chosen to undertake the necessary researches. May I tell you how the
mission thus entrusted to me fulfilled my dearest wish? From my early
youth I had felt myself irresistibly drawn towards Africa, and I was
filled with a desire to take a modest share in the discoveries of great
explorers, whose intrepid expeditions had revealed to the civilized
world some part of the mysterious and immense dark continent.

You doubtless remember how vague, some thirty years ago, was our
knowledge of that part of the world. At that time—which now seems so far
away even for those then living—I had for chaplain at the grammar-school
a holy man who was an ardent patriot; in his Sunday sermons he used to
talk to us a little of our duty to God, and still more of our duty to
our humiliated country, which was waiting and meditating, as it
laboured, on the possible reparation of the iniquities of 1871. His
voice, sad at first while he spoke of our disasters and the sufferings
of our lost provinces, soon grew eager and thrilled as he showed us the
new way to be taken by children, as we then were, to raise the prestige
of our flag: he would speak to us of that mysterious Africa, half
revealed by Livingstone, Stanley, and Savorgnan de Brazza; and I fancy,
after these thirty years, I still hear the sound of the name of
Savorgnan de Brazza re-echoing through our humble chapel and thrilling
like a bugle-call. Then, of an evening in the class-room, I would ponder
over the map of Africa, where amid great blank spaces appeared in the
centre of the continent a few geographical features, one of which,
coloured in blue, Lake Chad, possessed a singular fascination for me.

Some years later, on leaving Saint-Cyr, I began to look forward to the
realizing of my dream: after a first campaign in Madagascar, I was sent
out to serve on the banks of the Niger in 1899; and since that date each
successive campaign in Africa allowed me to push a little further
eastwards, and so get to work on a fresh item of the programme I had set
myself to carry out: to establish an accurate geographical liaison
between the basins of the Niger, the Chad, and the Nile, and unite by a
great transversal line the extreme ends of the routes followed by
Nachtigal to Tibesti, Borkou, Wadai and Dar Four.

In 1912 I was ordered to take command of the province of Kanem for the
purpose of preparing a projected expedition against Borkou, where the
Senoussists had established their chief centre of agitation and anti-
French propaganda, and whence they periodically sent out plundering
expeditions, which spread ruin and desolation among the peaceful tribes
placed under our protection. About the same time, the Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres entrusted me with the mission I mentioned
above, concerning the supposed connection between the basins of the Chad
and of the Nile. Of this latter expedition, which lasted five years
—1912-1917—I now propose to give you a _résumé_.


=2. From Congo to Borkou.=


_From Congo to Lake Chad._—I do not think there would be any real
interest in a detailed account of my journey to Kanem; I followed a
route pretty well known, the Congo-Ubangi-Shari route. We left the
steamer at Matadi, at the foot of the cataracts, and took the Belgian
railway which leads to Kinshassa on Stanley Pool, at the head of the
cataracts; from there, after crossing the Congo to land at Brazzaville,
we proceeded on a river-steamer, first up the Congo itself, and then up
its tributary the Ubangi, as far as Bangui. Farther up, lighter steamers
enabled us to surmount the rapids and reach Fort De Possel, a little
post built on the right bank at the point where the Ubangi changes its
course. From Fort De Possel we went by land to Fort Crampel, covering
nearly 160 miles of the zone which divides the waters between the basins
of the Congo and the Chad. A fine road for motor-cars was being
completed when I passed, but the only means of transport was carriers on
foot. At Fort Crampel we embarked in small boats and descended the
Gribingui till it falls into the Bahr-Sara, taking farther down the name
of Shari; from thence we proceeded on a river-steamer up the Shari till
we reached the Chad, and crossed over to the post of Bol, on the
northern shore of the lake; and finally, in four more stages, we reached
by land the town of Mao, the military and political centre of Kanem.

This journey, which takes about twelve or fourteen weeks, according to
the season, is very interesting for travellers, and especially for
sportsmen, who find opportunity for exercising their skill on game of
all sizes, from the elephant and the lion to the modest guinea-fowl. I
may mention that when I passed by the banks of the Shari, the
remembrance of the exciting hunts of the celebrated aviator Latham,
killed by a buffalo, was still fresh in every one’s mind; but does any
one remember Latham now? We should notice that this line is still far
from comfortable, and that the ever-present danger of catching the
sleeping sickness through the myriads of glossina-flies that may sting
the traveller, spoils all the pleasure one would feel in beholding the
splendid landscapes of tropical rivers flowing beneath the shady arches
of the quiet forests.

_A Year in Kanem_ (1912-1913).—I will pass briefly over the twelve
months’ period of my command in Kanem and the neighbouring districts. My
daily task—military, political, administrative, and judicial as well—was
such that the days seemed too short for the business to be done. It must
be said indeed that the Kanembus, the Budumas, the Toubous, and the
Arabs of this region may be reckoned among the most quarrelsome and
litigious people one can imagine.

But the great matter was to be informed in time of the Senoussist raids,
and when that could not be done, to discover and cut off their retreat
towards their distant haunts; but we had to do with old stagers of the
Sahara, who knew admirably well to wait for the right moment, and beat a
rapid retreat with their booty once the thing was done.

Another important matter was the material preparation for the expedition
planned against Borkou and Tibesti, where the Senoussists assembled
their bands of brigands, and where they concealed their booty: camels,
horses, cattle, and, above all, women and children, carried off into
slavery.

The secrecy of this expedition was ensured through the simple fact that
our enemies’ spies had so often announced the formation and imminent
setting out of a punitive column, as to render the Borkou gentlemen
quite incredulous of its possibility; they were startled, however, when
in July I led a reconnoitring party to the extreme limits of our
frontier, but as I retraced my steps without going beyond this line,
they were confirmed in their opinion that we should not dare to attack
their fortress of Ain Galakka, and they recommenced more boldly than
ever their incursions and plunderings among our villages and our tribes.
For this reason, when, in the early November of 1912, Colonel Largeau
came and assumed the command of an expeditionary column, our departure
for the north-east was not considered by the Senoussists of Borkou as
more threatening to them than any reconnoitring party of the preceding
months had proved to be.


=3. In Borkou.=


_The Conquest of Borkou._—Our expedition consisted of 400 black
soldiers, with two mountain-guns; about 200 Arab and Toubou volunteers,
forming a “goum” or party of scouts, accompanied the column. We carried
with us provisions for forty days, and the total number of our camels
was about 2000. By a rather extraordinary piece of good luck, our
forward march was not disturbed by the enemy. The season was favourable,
the days not being over-hot, and the nights fairly cool; the usual
temperature at sunrise was about 60° Fahr., but a very strong wind,
blowing from the north-east and raising blinding clouds of sand, made it
seem a great deal colder. Our march was skilfully concealed as far as
Kourouadi, a point from which we could threaten the fortress of Ain
Galakka as easily as that of Faya. There, after allowing the troops a
day for rest and final preparation, it was decided to strike a decisive
blow at Ain Galakka, the principal centre of the Senoussist forces.

Our column, leaving its convoy a dozen kilometres in the rear, under a
guard of fifty men, appeared before Ain Galakka on the morning of 27
November 1913; the enemy were completely surprised. The attack began by
a bombardment of no more than about a hundred shells, which did great
damage inside the _zawia_, and made in the outer wall many a breach for
the infantry to pass through. The assault was opened at ten o’clock; the
defenders, though not numerous, offered a vigorous resistance,
preferring to die rather than surrender; by mid-day the entire fortress
was in our hands. We had about forty casualties, of which a third were
killed.

[Illustration: THE COLUMN HALTED AT THE WELLS OF KOUROUADI, BORKOU]

[Illustration: THE FORT OF BERRIER-FONTAINE, OASIS OF FAYA]

[Illustration: ROCKY COUNTRY BETWEEN THE OASES OF YARDA AND BÉDO,
BORKOU]

[Illustration: DANCE OF THE NAKAZZAS, OASIS OF FAYA, BORKOU]

Leaving our wounded in Ain Galakka with a small garrison, we marched on
the _zawia_ of Faya, which we entered without striking a blow on
December 1. Thence proceeding still farther into the desert, we reached
in a week’s time Gouro, a point 200 kilometres north, the religious and
political centre of the Senoussists in Central Africa, which was seized
after a short struggle. Then, continuing its successful march towards
the east, the column took possession unopposed of the oasis of Ounianga,
60 miles from Gouro, and leaving a small garrison there we returned to
Faya, the best place to be chosen for the military and political centre
of the newly conquered territory.

_Importance of the Conquest of Borkou._—This laborious campaign had the
very important result of depriving the Senoussists of the valuable _tête
de pont_ on the south side of the Sahara which Borkou constituted for
them, enabling them to distribute over Central Africa arms, ammunition,
and propagandists of the holy war.

The great value of our conquest appeared plainly a few months later,
when the German Emperor let loose on the world the most awful war that
ever convulsed the Universe: a Germano-Turkish mission, headed by Nuri
Bey, a brother of Enver Pasha, the Turkish Minister of War, landed in
Cyrenaica for the purpose of organizing, with the help of the
Senoussists, an outbreak in Central Africa against the protectorates
of France and Great Britain. This would have been an easy matter if our
enemies had been able to establish their headquarters in Borkou, for
they would then have been only a few hundred miles from German Bornou on
one side, and on another from Dar Four and Dar Sula, which showed a
certain hostility towards us. There is no doubt that, in this case, the
Anglo-French campaign in the Cameroons would have been conducted in very
different circumstances; when we take into consideration the large stock
of arms and ammunition prepared by the Germans in their colony, and the
care they had taken to fortify the mountain of Mora, we may suppose that
the German staff had hoped to establish by main force a continental
junction between the Cameroons and Turkey, through Kanem, Borkou, and
Libya, in case of the communication by sea being cut off. And I do not
think I shall betray any State secret by informing you that the Chad
territory, with its modest resources in men and ammunition, would have
been very difficult to defend with any chance of success against such an
attack. I may also add that, had the Turco-Germans been able to
accomplish their design, the result would have been exceedingly perilous
for Franco-British rule throughout the whole of Dark Africa.

By uniting, under my command, our frontier territories of the Libyan
desert, the French Government’s aim was to constitute a force able to
resist any attempts that might be made to retake from us the excellent
base of operations that Borkou afforded.

_Four Years in Borkou_ (1913-1917).—I do not think it would be of any
great interest to lengthen this geographical lecture by explaining to
you the difficulties of every kind that I was obliged to overcome during
about four consecutive years, in order to fulfil the military task
allotted to me. As Borkou produces little else but dates, and Ennedi
scarcely anything at all, I was compelled to procure from Kanem and from
Wadaï the corn, meat, and other food-stuffs necessary for the
maintenance of my civil and military subordinates. Now, the organizing
of the commissariat transport became more and more difficult every six
months; the want of pasture along the roads we had to take, the
incessant raids of the nomads and the counter-raids of my troops, caused
irreparable losses among our camels. From the end of 1913 to the first
months of 1917, the activity of the rebels was so great, owing to the
instigation of the Turco-Senoussists, that my troops could get no rest.

_A Bird’s-eye View of the Country._—When on leaving the shores of Lake
Chad we proceeded towards the north-east, we first entered into a sandy
region, with parallel valleys running between grassy downs that rose to
a height of not more than 300 feet: this was Kanem, the country of corn
and cattle, where subterranean water abounds and where it is easy to
live.

After marching for about 100 miles, we left this fertile country and
dropped quite suddenly into the desert itself, with its dull, empty,
vague horizons, so monotonous that the slightest details interested us,
such as a line of stones on the sand, the sight of a crescent of sand-
dunes, or a poor, solitary, half-dead shrub; also our passing through a
meagre pasturage of dusty _had_ was quite an event, or the discovery in
the distance of a few green bushes of _siwak_, till we reached the
wells, where we were to rest all day long, to lead the camels to drink,
and renew our own provision of water, which was often brackish and evil-
smelling. This was the deceptive desert of the Lowlands of the Chad, the
region I mentioned above as being lower in level than Lake Chad itself.

After a further march of about 250 miles we entered the country of
rocks; at first scarcely visible above the sands, they soon rose in
sharp peaks that looked like mediæval ruins, and then shot up into long
steep cliffs bordering rugged plateaux, that formed ledges one above the
other to the foot of the mountains: this was the region of Borkou,
Tibesti, and Ennedi, the very heart of the desert, situated at almost
the same distance from the shores of Lake Chad, the Nile, and the
Mediterranean. This rocky belt forms, from the Tripolitain to Dar Four,
a long broken wall, encircling on the north-east the basin of the Chad,
which it divides from the dismal and unexplored waste of the Lybian
Desert. Tibesti and Ennedi form the highest and almost inaccessible
parts of this region, while another part, Borkou, consists of a wide
depression between the basins of the Chad and of the Nile.


=4. The Oasis of Borkou.=


_Faya._—The _zawia_ of Faya had been chosen as the military and
administrative centre of French Borkou, in preference to those of the
Senoussists (Ain Galakka and Gouro), because it offers the least
unfavourable lines of communication with the garrisons of Gouro, Fada,
and Ounianga, and the best position for joining Borkou by wireless
telegraphy to the nearest post of the Chad territory, 350 miles to the
south.

The huts of the Senoussist _zawia_ sheltered us from the sun and the
sand-storms, but they were in such a state of ruin and decay that we
were obliged to begin at once and make bricks—unbaked, of course.
Unluckily, for constructing our buildings we were obliged to depend on
the work of the few black soldiers who were not employed in exterior
operations; so that many months elapsed before we could build a
sufficient number of habitable houses, and complete the detached works
of our defensive arrangements, including three rows of rope network,
supposed to be barbed, by means of the addition of long thorns from the
date-trees.

The landscape from the summit of the square donjon which overtopped the
fort, though wanting in charm and beauty, was not without a style of its
own; the post was built in the middle of a broad valley, closed in on
the east, but opening spaciously towards the west; its rugged, steep,
rocky sides plunging into shifting sands and wind-swept dunes, each dune
curved into the form of a crescent.

At the foot of the fort the axis of the valley was delineated by fine
rows of date-bearing palms, about 500 yards wide by 20,000 long, broken
at intervals by heaps of moving dunes. On either side of the palm-grove
there stretched green meadows, which looked as though they would afford
fine pasturage for cattle, but which in reality were covered with sharp,
hard grasses and herbs of no nutritive value: the most characteristic
and the least bad was _akul_, a regular little bush of sharp thorns,
which the camels would eat, but not without making a funny grimace at
every mouthful.

All along the valley there lies a sheet of subterranean water, which
rises in some places so near to the surface that the gazelles and
jackals easily slake their thirst by scraping away with their feet a few
inches of the soil; here and there, indeed, a little stream of water
flows out of the sand, and runs a few yards towards a neighbouring
depression, and little pools are formed in natural or artificial hollows
made in the soil.

These jackals and gazelles are the only wild animals found in Borkou;
the latter are quite unapproachable by hunters, while the former remain
hidden in the daytime, but come in bands at night, yelping round the
villages, and penetrate boldly into inhabited enclosures to seek their
prey. So cunning are they that they avoid the most ingenious traps the
natives can set. The lion, the panther, the hyena, and the wild boar
never pass beyond the desert boundaries of Kanem and Wadaï; even the
antelope and the ostrich, though bearing thirst so well, cannot venture
so far into the Sahara.

The winged domestic tribe is seen among the villages in the shape of
rare squads of lean fowls; and flights of turtledoves and pigeons roost
in the palm trees. A graceful species of sparrow, with black plumage and
white tails, fly in and out of the rocks, and even come into our
clayhouses; they sing like nightingales when building their nests, and
chirp like sparrows while they watch their young beginning to fly. All
round the inhabited houses the black crows may be heard croaking: they
are extremely audacious, whether attempting to snatch pieces of meat
roasting before a kitchen fire, or settling on the back of a wounded
camel and tearing off with their beaks morsels of bleeding flesh.

Snakes are fairly common, the largest being hardly more than a yard in
length and one or two inches thick; the most dangerous is the short
bulky viper that lies hidden in clumps of grass, and whose bite is fatal
even to camels. Scorpions abound, generally of a greenish hue, sometimes
black; their sting is very painful, and may be eventually mortal to
women and children.

Amidst the rocks one may find a curious eatable lizard, the “dundou”; it
is inoffensive, but when it does bite, it bites so fiercely that the
only way of making it let go is to pinch its tail sharply, either with
pincers or with one’s teeth.

There are very few domestic animals save the ass and the goat; but small
herds of oxen manage to cross the desert from November to February, when
cool days, pools remaining from the rainy season, and the scanty
pasturages of grasses produced here and there by the few summer showers
allow them to pursue their march by short stages.

Where the animal kingdom exhibits its greatest vitality, however, is in
the insect world: the common fly, dirty and worrying, rules despotically
by day, together with gad-flies and big stinging flies of a pretty
greenish hue. At nightfall, the very time when one might enjoy a little
rest on the terrace of the houses, moths, coleopters, locusts,
dragonflies, and bugs become very lively, and whirl madly round the
table where a light is shining, so that it is far preferable to dine
lighted only by the moon and the stars. When there is no wind at night
there are swarms of mosquitoes, and also of a kind of little sand-fly
that pass between the meshes of the best mosquito-nets.

[Illustration: SANDSTONE ROCKS NEAR ORORI, BORKOU]

[Illustration: ROCK DRAWINGS, OASIS OF YARDA, BORKOU]

[Illustration: SANDSTONE ROCKS ATTACKED BY MOVING DUNES, OASIS OF YARDA,
BORKOU]

_Cultivation._—The soil indeed is not very fertile, which is the reverse
of the account given of most oases in the north of the Sahara. It is
especially favourable to the cultivation of the date-bearing palm, which
loves to have its foot in the water and its summit in the burning sun,
but does not stand rain well. The first dates ripen in the month of May,
while the latest are gathered in September; they vary in size, and are
dark or light in colour according to their variety, but nearly all are
of a very good quality, as sweet and fleshy as one could wish. The
greater part of the crop is put to dry, while the most luscious are
gathered into heaps and pressed into goatskins, to be carried to Wadai
and Kanem and other places farther off.

After the date-gathering the natives prepare their gardens for the
sowing of corn, which takes place in November and December. The ground
is arranged in small squares, ingeniously adapted for irrigation; but
the produce is meagre owing to the want of manure; this is remedied, to
a certain extent, by an addition of virgin soil, containing more or less
soda, which is fetched from some distance on donkey-back. The gardens
are intersected with long parallel hedges, which shelter the ears from
the withering violence of the north-east wind. The harvest is gathered
in towards the end of March, and a short time later the ground is
prepared for the sowing of millet, which yields a still smaller crop
than the corn. When we add that in some gardens there grow a few onions
and tomatoes, as well as a kind of spinach, scarcely appreciated
anywhere but in Borkou, we shall have enumerated nearly all the
available food-stuffs of the oases.

I must not forget to mention that the Senoussists had succeeded in
importing to Gouro and Faya some fig-trees and a few vines; and on our
side we managed to acclimatize the sweet potato, a precious resource
which came from Kanem. We were less fortunate in our repeated attempts
to acclimatize French vegetables, which succeed so well in the
neighbourhood of Lake Chad during the cool season; the poverty of the
soil, the want of manure, the extreme dryness of the north-east wind,
the voracity of the grasshoppers and other destructive insects, were no
doubt the causes of our lamentable failure as agriculturists.

_Winds and Rain._—In the heart of the Sahara, where rain is so rare a
meteorological phenomenon, the wind is the high arbiter of each day’s
weather. The weather is fine when the wind is light, and bad when it is
strong; in the latter case nothing is to be seen but whirling columns of
sand, raised by the north-east wind, blowing in stormy gusts and
covering the whole landscape with a thick dry mist of brownish dust that
penetrates everywhere and is very painful to the eyes, so that one does
well on such occasions to wear motor-goggles to avoid ophthalmia. These
north-east winds blow more or less violently for a great part of the
year, sometimes for a few hours only each morning, sometimes for whole
days and nights. I may say that we were able to note a fair correlation
between the oscillations of the curves of the registering barometer and
thermometer and the force and duration of these winds; they usually
coincide with low temperatures and high atmospheric pressure, while the
light winds or the dead calm accompany low pressure and high
temperatures. Taking as a basis the information furnished by the
natives, borne out by our four years of regular observations, it may be
said that, as a general rule, the north-east wind reigns supreme over
Borkou and the neighbouring districts from October to May or June (that
is to say, from about the autumnal equinox to the summer solstice);
whereas in July, August, and September still weather prevails,
alternating with gentle west-south-westerly winds.

It is these latter winds that bring with them from the Atlantic what
little moisture nature measures out each year so parsimoniously to these
dried-up lands. Then the sky clouds over almost every afternoon, but
one’s hope of refreshing showers is vain; the heat thrown up from the
scorched ground, and the rapidly rising temperature through which the
raindrops fall towards the earth (a rise of about 3° Fahr. per 1000
feet), are enough to bring about their more or less complete evaporation
before they reach the ground, and one sees long frayed streaks of grey
cloud trailing almost along the ground, like unravelled skeins of wool,
from which a few rare drops fall on the thirsty earth. When we took
possession of Borkou the inhabitants assured us with one voice that it
had not rained in their country for eleven years, thus putting back the
date of the last rain to the year 1902; by a curious chance our entry
into Faya (on 1 December 1913) was greeted by a little shower of utterly
unlooked-for rain. The inhabitants saw in this downfall (unusual not
only for that region, but for that season of the year) a happy omen for
the rainy season of 1914, an omen which was realized, for in the month
of August 1914 we had the satisfaction of registering about 90 mm. of
rain at Faya. In 1915 the rainfall was hardly worth mentioning, and in
1916 about 35 mm.

Though Borkou is more than 300 miles south of the Tropic of Cancer, and
very low-lying (650 feet above sea-level), the heat is really excessive
only for six or seven months of the year, from mid-March to mid-October.
During our observations, extending over three years, the maxima
registered in the hot season never exceeded 117° Fahr., but temperatures
of 110° to 115° were frequent. During the cool season, from December to
February, the minima sometimes fall below 50° Fahr. without ever getting
down to freezing-point. The dryness of the air is very noticeable from
November to June, when a difference of more than two to one may
regularly be observed between the simultaneous indications of the dry
and wet thermometers: for instance, when the former stands at 44° C. the
second often reads less than 20°. On the other hand, in August and
September, under the influence of the winds blowing from the Atlantic
Ocean, the air becomes very damp and the heat grows stifling.

In spite of its excessive heat, the climate of Borkou is comparatively
healthy; very relaxing during the hot and damp season, it is extremely
pleasant in the months corresponding to our autumn and winter. During my
stay, lasting from 1913 to 1917, none of my European fellow-workers had
any serious illness, and my black troops, though kept hard at work in
the shape of arduous reconnoitring and escort duty, and with barely
enough to eat, showed a percentage of sickness and deaths below the
average of the other garrisons throughout the Chad Territory.

_Population and Commerce._—The population of Borkou consists of nomads,
the Tedas and the Nakazzas—the great nobles of the desert—and of a
sedentary tribe, the Dozzas, who are only half noble, for want of the
few camels whose possession would enable them to take a share in the
profitable plundering raids in the desert. There is also a third
category of inhabitants, the Kamajas, half serfs, half slaves, whose
duty it is to attend to the gardens and the plantations of palms, and
who are profoundly despised by the other two categories. The total
population of Borkou would not appear to exceed some ten thousand souls,
distributed among a score of more or less flourishing palm plantations.

The commercial activity of the oases of Borkou is far from negligible;
they export towards the south salt, soda, and dates, and receive in
exchange cereals, butter, cattle, and smoke-dried meat. Caravans of two
hundred camels may often be seen coming to load up with salt at the
Arouelli salt-pits near Ounianga; and Arab caravans pass by on the way
from Cyrenaica, by Koufra and Sarra wells, importing to Wadai stuffs,
sugar, coffee, tea, mercery, and (in time past) arms and ammunition; and
exporting principally millet, butter, smoked meat, hides raw or tanned,
ostrich feathers, elephants’ tusks, and so forth. The slave-trade,
formerly carried on through Borkou between Wadai and Cyrenaica on a
great scale, has almost entirely ceased since we took possession of the
country.


=5. Exploration of the Western Borders of the Libyan Desert: Ounianga-
Erdi=


After drawing up the map of the western part of Borkou, subsequent to my
reconnaissance in March and April of the various oases that succeed one
another between Faya and Ain Galakka on the south and Gouro on the
north, I devoted the last quarter of 1914 to an exploration of the
unknown regions situated further east. Over and above their geographical
interest, the said regions were of great military importance. My object
was, in fact, to ascertain whether a counter-attack by the Senoussists,
starting from Koufra and crossing the Libyan desert, could easily hope
to escape the vigilance of our camel-corps patrols and fall on the
remoter borders of Borkou and Ennedi.

_From Faya to Ounianga._—With this intention I left the oasis of Faya on
1 October 1914, at the head of a small escort, taking with me only some
thirty lean camels tired and mangy, only capable of short stages and of
carrying light loads. The result was that I spent nine days in covering
the 117 miles between Faya and Ounianga, a journey that offers no
difficulties and is usually completed in five or six stages. The points
at which water may be found are frequent—at least one every 20 miles—and
permanent; but grazing-grounds were almost non-existent at that time in
consequence of the eleven years’ drought the country had just suffered
from. The rain that had fallen in August had, it is true, made a few
green blades spring here and there, and they were eagerly snapped up by
our camels as they passed; but they were still so scattered among the
broken rocks that they rather emphasized than diminished the desolate
barrenness of these dreary solitudes. From place to place, round a
water-hole, one found a few wretched acacias, bushes of _rtem_ or tufts
of _akrech_. By chance one would come across what had once been a field
of dried-up _hâd_ whose thorny branches were grey with dust; but in a
general way the landscape was disappointingly bare, and I wondered
anxiously how long my camels would hold out on this starvation diet.

The route passed alternately through hamadas of sandstone, the blackened
rocks of which emerged from irregular dunes, and through sandy plains
into which one sank, raising thick clouds of dust finer than ashes. We
did not meet a living soul on the way, except a detachment going back to
Faya, and a little caravan consisting of two delegates of the Grand
Senoussi coming from Cyrenaica on their way to Fort Lamy as an embassy
to the commander of the territory. I spent an afternoon with them near
the wells of Eddeki, and so had the pleasure of offering them tea. The
chief delegate, Si Mahmoud Sheikh, was a Khoan of fairly high rank in
the Senoussist confraternity. His appearance was that of a good
Mussulman “brother” by no means indifferent to the good things of this
world; fifty years old, and of a fine corpulence, he had a fair but
sunburnt complexion, grey hair, a black beard, a round face, thin lips,
small eyes, and a sensual nose. He was dressed all in white, walked with
gravity, and spoke little. His attitude, free from arrogance, was not
without a touch of awkwardness, and his reserve concealed but ill his
uneasiness about the fate that might await him during his long journey
among the infidels.

His companion, Abdallah Ghariani, was younger and of a very modest rank
among the Khoans. He had a jovial, bustling manner, and talked volubly,
but his eyes were sly and shifty. While we drank tea flavoured with
mint, he boasted of the pacific intentions of Ahmed Sherif, insisted on
the desire of the Confraternity to maintain active commercial relations
between Cyrenaica and the Wadai, and on the necessity for suppressing
the Toubou brigandage that hindered the march of the caravans. In
conclusion, he declared that he had eaten no meat for a long time and
begged me to make him a present of a small quantity of smoke-dried
meat—a precious commodity in the desert, where the resources of hunting
do not exist.

[Illustration: NATURAL CISTERN, ERDI]

[Illustration: THE PEAK OF DIMI (600 m.), ERDI]

[Illustration: THE PEAKS OF DOURDOURO (1000. m.), ERDI]

_Ounianga._—I reached the valley of Ounianga on October 9 in the
morning, and was not a little astonished at failing to see the palm
plantation till the moment of entering it; for, unlike those of Borkou,
which can be seen from a distance, the oasis of Ounianga is hidden in a
rocky excavation some 30 yards in depth and 4 or 5 miles long by 1 or 2
wide. The landscape thus formed is incomparably picturesque: a great
sheet of calm water with blue shadows, edged with rosy-tinted beaches of
sand, and fringed with green palm-trees stretched within a circle of
bare wind-carved sandstone whose sombre hues cast here and there, under
the blazing sun, warm shadows glowing with red or gold.

But it must be recognized that in spite of its beauty the palm
plantation of Ounianga is but wretchedness, gloom, and disappointment.
The inhabitants, known as Ounias, are few—some hundreds at most. On the
other hand, millions of flies fiercely exercise their buzzing activity
for fourteen hours a day on man and beast. The soil is unfruitful, and
produces hardly anything but dates. The foodstuffs necessary to
life—cereals, butter, smoke-dried meat—are brought at great cost by
caravans coming from Abéché to seek the supplies of salt from Arouelli
needed by the inhabitants of Wadai. Even the camels cannot live in the
neighbourhood for want of enough pasture, and from this cause our little
garrison had the utmost difficulty not only in getting supplies, but in
fulfilling the mission of watching the approaches of the frontier, and
especially the great road from Koufra that emerges from the Libyan
desert in the region of Tekro Arouelli.

It occupied at the north end of the lake a little rectangular fort,
solidly built, but surrounded at a short distance by rocks that blocked
the view and overlooked it to the north and east. It had not been
possible to find a more favourable site, offering at the same time
extensive views and an easily accessible water-supply.

I devoted two days to different tasks (inspections of the garrison,
interviews with the Ounia chiefs and with two Khoans, former governors
of the country in the time of the Senoussist domination, and so forth),
and set out again on October 11 to visit the last water-points before
entering the Libyan desert.

The Libyan desert is still almost completely unknown, no European
traveller having been able as yet to cross it from side to side, whether
from north to south or from east to west. In 1870 Gerhardt Rohlfs
visited the northern part, as far as the oases of Koufra; a quarter of a
century later British officers penetrated the south-eastern region as
far as Bir Natrun, about 200 miles west of the Nile. On our part, we
have been able to explore the south-western district and to obtain in
respect of the central part fresh information, which it will not be easy
to verify and extend until the French, British, and Italian governments
combine in organizing for that purpose a geographical expedition, which
would be of considerable scientific and even political interest.

I first took the direction of the salt-pits of Arouelli, situated 28
miles to the northwards, where I met a caravan that had just loaded up
with 30 tons of salt for the Wadai markets. The salt-bed lies at the
bottom of an absolutely bare sandy depression, covering some 25 acres.
The bed of salt, which is only about 6 or 8 inches thick, is on the
surface, and more or less mixed with sand. The water-bearing stratum
lies at a depth of 5 or 6 feet, and the water is naturally very salt.
The water, rising to the surface by capillarity, evaporates, forming the
salt crust that the caravans carry away in pieces, and which the natives
of the Wadai and the countries bordering on it consume without further
preparation. If one may trust the information supplied by the Ounias,
the salt crust forms again about three months after being taken away, so
that the output of the Arouelli pits would amount to nearly 100,000
cubic metres of salt annually, an output sufficient to satisfy the
culinary needs of more than ten million people, and worth on the spot,
as prices were before the war, some fifteen million francs.

From Arouelli I went eastwards to fix the position of the well of Tekro,
where there is also a deposit of salt which is not worked, the admixture
of sand being too great. The well of Tekro is particularly important,
because it is situated at the extremity of the great caravan route
joining the Mediterranean to the Soudan by the oases of Koufra and the
well of Sarra. The water is abundant and fairly fresh, but the
vegetation is reduced to a hundred clumps of siwak and a few tufts of
grass of no value for the feeding of camels.

_The Route towards Koufra._—Between Tekro and Koufra the distance to be
covered is about 350 miles, about half of which had just been
reconnoitred by Lieutenant Fouché, commanding the garrison of Ounianga.
Marching in a general direction north-north-east he had first crossed a
rocky zone of slight elevation, spending four hours in doing so; then
for two days he traversed an immense sandy plain, bare of all
vegetation, with here and there stretches of rock surface level with the
ground; broken lines of rocky heights were visible in the distance to
east and west. These heights went to join the plateau of Jef-Jef, in the
direction of which he marched for twelve hours during the third day. On
the fourth, he found himself in a vast plain from which the Djebel
Habid, 50 miles away to the east, can be seen during the first few
hours. The fifth day ranges of moving sand-dunes that served as
landmarks for the guides were observed to the north-west, and at last,
at nightfall on the sixth day, he reached the well of Sarra, lying in a
hollow running from south-west to north-east and 30 metres deep.

The site of the well was chosen by the revered Sidi el Mahdi about 1898,
and the works began almost at once. The boring, all done with picks and
crowbars, was effected in hard reddish sandstone, by gangs of six
workmen, relieved every month, and supplied with food and water by an
endless succession of camel-convoys. At the end of eighteen or twenty
months of uninterrupted work the water was at length found, clear,
fresh, and abundant, at a depth of 80 yards, and since then the crossing
of the Libyan desert has become relatively easy, the longest stretch
without water being reduced to about 180 miles, whereas it was formerly
almost 300. From the well of Sarra to Koufra the distance to be covered
is only about 160 miles and offers no further difficulties, thanks to
the intermediate well of Bechra.

What makes the journey from Ounianga to Koufra particularly troublesome
is the total absence of pasturage for 500 miles, a state of things that
results in the loss of many camels on every journey. The only good
pasturage in the whole region is said to be found 80 or 100 miles to the
east of the Sarra well, in the Djebel El Aouinat, an unexplored mountain
mass of an extent not exceeding 1500 to 2000 square miles, as I am
informed, and whose altitude may be roughly put at from 4000 to 5000
feet. It goes without saying that I only give these figures as a mere
indication, and as subject to caution in every respect.

The break in continuity between the surveys of Rohlfs from the
Mediterranean to Koufra and ours from the Wadai to the well of Sarra is
consequently reduced to about 180 miles; but this gap does not seem
likely to be bridged before Italy proceeds to an effective occupation of
the oasis of Koufra, which falls within her sphere of influence.

Having ascertained the site, depth, and value of the Sarra wells,
Lieutenant Fouché, in accordance with his instructions, set himself to
march back to Ounianga, but the return journey was particularly
dramatic. For from the very first day his guide led him directly south,
instead of marching south-south-west. One is justified in supposing that
he meant to lead astray in the desert the detachment whose camels were
so exhausted that everybody went on foot, and whose store of water was
limited to a little less than a gallon a day per man. Astonished at this
unaccustomed deviation, the lieutenant drew the guide’s attention to it,
but the latter answered: “Do not be uneasy, we are on the right road.”
But when he judged that the column was far enough from the tracks left
by the outward journey, he replied to a fresh observation made by the
lieutenant: “You are probably right, for I no longer see my usual
landmarks; but if you would lend me a camel and a skin of water, I would
go and find our tracks of the other day, and as soon as I had found them
I would come back to look for you.” The lieutenant thought it wiser to
turn guide himself, and, compass in hand, he put himself at the head of
the caravan, with what anxiety may be guessed! An error of direction of
a few degrees—quite a usual thing in marching by the compass with no
natural landmarks—might work out at a matter of 15 miles in a distance
of 180, that being the distance to Tekro. And the well had to be found,
in the immensity of the desert, before the detachment’s scanty water-
supply gave out! The black soldiers’ thirst was aggravated by the
crushing heat; reduced to a daily ration of a little less than 4 quarts
of water, they no longer ate any solid food. The camels, grown weak,
slackened their pace. The men, uneasy at not coming across their traces
of the outward journey, thought themselves hopelessly lost. Their feet,
swollen with weariness and made painful by the burning sands, seemed
incapable of carrying them to the end of that interminable plain, torrid
and unchanging, where the air vibrated as it vibrates above an
overheated stove, creating all along the route deceptive mirages,
ceaselessly dissolving and reappearing. After a while some of them lost
heart and wanted to stop, preferring to wait for death where they were
rather than go on with an aimless march. The lieutenant tried to cheer
them up by singing the praises of his compass, and promising them that
on the morning of the seventh day the three familiar rocks near the well
of Tekro should appear before them on the horizon. Incredulous, but
respectful, they betook themselves again to their journey, advancing
automatically behind the camels as exhausted as themselves, and by some
miracle, on the promised day and at the promised hour, they saw faintly
outlined against the far horizon the rocks of their salvation! A few
hours later, bivouacked round the well of Tekro, the brave fellows who
had just covered 350 miles on foot in fourteen days in conditions of the
utmost hardship, had forgotten their weariness and were contemplating
with respect, on the lieutenant’s table, the “good little iron” that had
saved them from the most horrible death.

As for the guide, he was left unmolested, his criminal intention not
being susceptible of absolute proof. It was the wisest course to take,
for by punishing him without proofs, all we should have gained would
have been to terrify men whom we might need later on! In the desert, the
best guides may have their weak moments!

_From Tekro to Ounianga._—From Tekro I came back to Ounianga, and
continuing eastwards by the lakes of Little Ounianga and N’Tegdey I
reached the salt-pits of Dimi, after crossing a chain of little sand-
dunes about 50 feet high, stretching from north-east to south-west, and
extending from 5 to 6 miles in breadth. This salt-pit lies in a sort of
huge circle of rock, in the middle of which rises an isolated conical
peak 500 or 600 feet high. It seems to me more extensive than that of
Arouelli, but the salt from it does not seem to be so much in demand, on
account of the very large proportion of sand it contains. The result is
that it is hardly used by any one except the natives of Ennedi, who have
only three days’ journey to go in order to get a supply of it. The
grazing, though by no means abundant, was less scanty than in the
regions I had just come through, and my skeleton-like camels could eat
their fill, for the first time in a whole month.

From the top of the rocks of Dimi my Ounia guide, Sougou, pointed out to
me in the east the almost horizontal lines of cliffs forming the most
westerly point of the mysterious plateaux of Erdi. The word “Erdi” means
in the language of the Toubous “expedition, razzia,” and would appear to
have been applied to that region from time immemorial because it served
as a meeting-place for the bands of raiders who put the caravans to
ransom and pushed their raids as far as northern Dar Four and Kordofan,
and sometimes even to the valley of the Nile in its middle reaches.
According to the guide, rocky tablelands were to be found there, of an
altitude comparable with that of Ennedi; the rains were less rare than
in Borkou, the grazing-grounds for camels abundant, and the points where
water could be found were hidden away in gorges difficult of access,
little known, and hard to find the way to. For his own part, he hardly
knew any except those of Erdi-Dji and Erdi-Ma, separated by a distance
of 70 or 80 miles.

I hesitated some time before continuing my journey towards this region,
whose very name was unknown till now; my water-barrels only gave me a
reserve of some thirty gallons, and my men’s skin bottles were so
corroded by the salts of sodium they had transported that they were
empty after twenty-four or thirty-six hours’ march. My camels, thin,
worn out, and more and more mangy, could not do more than 20 miles a
day, and I only had at my disposal ten days’ supplies for my detachment,
so that any error on my guide’s part might put me into a critical
position.

_Erdi._—In spite of everything I resolved to make the attempt, trusting
in fortune to ensure its success. In two marches we succeeded in
reaching the foot of the cliffs of Erdi-Dji, 750 feet high and about
2000 feet above the sea. We found there good grazing for the camels, and
from that day onward we had abundant fodder at each successive stage, so
that I was delivered from the dread of seeing my indispensable beasts of
burden waste away from inanition. The water was no less abundant, and
was found in natural cisterns hollowed out by waterfalls in the beds of
dried-up torrents that came down from the plateau. Some of these
cisterns contained nothing but sand; but it was enough to bore a hole 1
or 2 feet deep in the sand to obtain a sufficient store of water.

From the top of the cliffs all that could be seen was an immense
plateau, slightly undulating, and rising gradually towards the north-
east. Beyond the line of the horizon some dozen miles away, there rose,
as our guide told me, other cliffs; but all I could do was to take note
of that information without being able to verify it.

Continuing our route eastwards along the foot of the cliffs, we reached
five days later the region of Erdi-Ma, decidedly higher than that of
Erdi-Dji: the highest altitude I had the opportunity of measuring
exceeded 3000 feet. Our bivouac was installed at the entrance of the
gorges of Dourdouro, where very picturesque natural cisterns are to be
found containing abundant quantities of water withdrawn by the positions
of the enclosing rocks from the drying action of sun and wind. During
the whole of the way thither we did not see a living soul, any more than
in the neighbourhood of Dourdouro.

My guide never having gone beyond that point, it was impossible to push
my investigations further. Besides, I had now only four days’ supplies
left, a fact which obliged me to change my direction and make for Wad
Mourdi, on the northern border of Ennedi, where I was to receive fresh
supplies. I had eventually to be satisfied with determining the position
of this point and measuring a few heights while we were renewing our
store of water before starting again after a day’s rest.

This expedition, though limited to the south-western border of the
massif of Erdi, revealed some interesting facts about the configuration
of the country towards the 18th degree of latitude north and the 23rd
degree of longitude east of Greenwich; the altitudes increased from west
to east, and it seemed likely that the massif of Erdi was connected in
one direction with the mountains of Tibesti by the plateau of Jef-Jef,
and in another with the still unknown massif of El Aouinat, situated
approximately between the 22nd and 23rd degrees of latitude north and
the 24th and 25th degrees of longitude east.

Later information gave me a few further indications about western Erdi,
where two water-points were found; one Bini-Erdi, about 80 miles north-
east of Dourdouro, and the other, Erdi-Fouchini, some 60 miles north of
Dourdouro, at the foot of a line of tall cliffs. The deduction may be
allowed, for the time being, that the central tableland of Erdi offers
altitudes presumably superior to 4000 feet, and that it slopes gently
down on the east to the great sandy plain, without vegetation or water,
across which passes the route from El Aouinat to Merga, a route that
establishes direct but very difficult communication between Koufra and
Dar Four, to the east of the 24th degree of longitude.

_Between Erdi and Ennedi._—In leaving Dourdouro to march southwards I
was going into the unknown. I could, no doubt, see in front of me, 40
miles away, the crests of northern Ennedi, at the foot of which I was to
find the water-points of Aga and Diona; but to seek the said points
without guide in the chaos of rocks was a risky undertaking, and might
have been held unreasonable if the way our supplies were running short
had not obliged me to go forward.

A vast depression, stretching from south-south-west to north-north-east
and of an average breadth of some 30 miles, separated Erdi from Ennedi;
it was the depression I heard spoken of earlier as a prolongation of
that of the Bahr El Ghazal, through which Lake Chad once poured its
waters into the lakes of Toro and Djourab, and consequently that by
which the basins of the Chad and the Nile might in ancient times have
entered into communication. That being so, I took the utmost care in
examining the region and determining the altitudes. The lowest point was
found about 30 kilometres from Dourdouro. Its altitude was 1750 feet, or
1000 feet higher than that of Bokalia at the north-eastern extremity of
the Djourab. The slope was therefore from north-east to south-west, as
was confirmed by the shape of the ground and the general direction of
the valleys running into that depression, and I was able to conclude
that if an ancient river once flowed in the bottom of that broad valley,
which is hardly likely, it ran, not towards the Nile, but towards the
lowlands of the Chad. By this evidence, one of the most important items
of my geographical programme was fully elucidated: the basin of Lake
Chad constitutes in the centre of Africa a closed basin which has never
been connected with the basin of the Nile. The lake zone, now dried up,
consisting of Kanem, the lowlands of Lake Chad, and Borkou, was once the
outlet for the affluents of Lake Chad and for many great rivers coming
down from the mountain mass of Ennedi, Erdi, and Tibesti. Its outline at
successive periods—an outline in all probability very irregular—might be
indicated by the hypsometric curves 270—260—250 metres, adopting for the
Lake Chad of to-day the altitude of 240 metres. Its extent at that
period must have been comparable with that of the Caspian Sea at the
present day, and its greatest depth some hundred metres.

In the evening of the second day’s march, when we were drawing near the
foothills of Ennedi, we had not yet found any well, and our tiny store
of water was used up. But spying in the west a notable gap in the line
of hills, I thought we should be likely to find a water-point there, and
profited by the coolness of the night to try to reach it. At dawn we
came out on a fine river, dried up, where we got a little water by
digging holes in the sand. By good luck our guide, Sougou, recognized
that we had reached Oued Mourdi, where he had come by another route some
six months earlier; thanks to which discovery, after a little search we
were able to bivouac beside the well of Diona.

If I had had time and means, it would have been extremely interesting to
explore up to its starting-point the great depression I had just
crossed, a depression which perhaps comes down from the region of Merga
in the heart of the Libyan Desert, where the natives agree in declaring
that there exists a little lake surrounded by a palm plantation. The
probable position of Merga is between the 25th and 26th degrees of
longitude east and 18th and 19th degrees of latitude north. This oasis
is situated on the direct route from Ennedi to Dongola, about 200 miles
from the last water-point of Ennedi (Gourgouro).

[Illustration: FRENCH SUDAN

Map to illustrate the WORK OF THE MISSION TILHO in TIBESTI, BORKU, ERDI
AND ENNEDI

THE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, AUG 1920.

_Modified Polyconic (1/M. International Map) Projection._

_Published by the Royal Geographical Society._

TIBESTI Tilho]


=6. Exploration of Ennedi.=


Having reached the well of Diona on 11 November 1914 in the morning, I
was joined next day by the camel-corps section of Borkou and Ennedi,
which brought me fresh supplies and were charged with the mission of
getting into touch with the nomads of eastern and central Ennedi, who
refused to acknowledge our authority and committed acts of brigandage on
our lines of communication. A few patrols in the neighbourhood having
made it clear that the rebels had decamped before us and taken refuge on
the high plateaux, the camel corps under the command of Captain
Châteauvieux climbed the heights of Erdébé, where they began an active
pursuit of the rebels. At the same time I reconnoitred the water-point
of Aga, 30 miles further east on the route from Erdi to Dar Four, a
route followed at that period by a certain number of Senoussist
emissaries on their way to exhort the Sultan Ali-Dinar to join in the
Holy War! For it will be remembered that Turkey had just at that date
entered into the war against us, and that the plan of the German general
staff included a vast Musulman rising destined to drive the French and
British out of their African possessions.

_Eastern Ennedi._—Finding no traces of the rebels at Aga, I rejoined the
camel corps in their occupation of the cisterns of Keïta on the plateau
of Erdébé, and until the end of November our reconnoitring columns
explored the labyrinth of gorges and rocky valleys over which the
refractory natives had scattered, without offering serious resistance
anywhere. The cold was beginning to be rather unpleasant, especially
when the north-east wind blew, but the thermometer did not fall as low
as zero. The water-points were extremely numerous, a fact which favoured
the break-up into small fractions of the rebel bands, whose chief
anxiety appeared to be the getting of their herds of camels and oxen and
their flocks of goats into a safe place. They did not seem to worry much
about their women and children, and let us capture them with the
serenest unconcern, being well aware that we should do them no harm, and
that their sustenance would be assured for the time being by our black
troops, always glad to leave the preparation of the daily cousscouss to
the other sex. To conclude this series of operations we had to fix the
limits of eastern Ennedi. An expedition was sent to Bao, 60 miles
southwards, the last water-point in the region, and thence to Kapterko
in the south-east, where a few rebels were captured. Another expedition
fixed the position of the well of Koïnaména some 50 miles east, and went
a stage further, to the beginning of the great plain without water or
vegetation that stretches out of sight to the eastward.

The general physiognomy of the country was that of a rocky tableland
intersected by a great number of valleys, more or less deep, and gorges,
separated by many little jagged chains of sandstone running in all
directions, and varying in height between about 200 and 500 feet. All
those depressions are covered with grass and shrubs, affording excellent
pasturage for the hillman’s flocks. Of plants useful for human food we
found gramineæ such as the Kreb and Anselik; what is more, the soil of
the valleys was literally covered in places with water-melons and
colocynths. Though I found no traces of tillage anywhere, I even had the
surprise of noticing from time to time hardy stalks of the wild cotton
plant, some reaching 6 feet in height.

Almost every year at the end of the rainy season temporary rivers flow
through these depressions, some of them turning northwards (and
consequently tributaries of the Chad basin), the others southwards,
where they once used to feed some great tributary of the Nile basin.
Numerous pools formed during the rains hold out for a longer or shorter
time in the flats of the more considerable of these valleys, while in
the narrower parts the water is stored in natural reservoirs, more or
less hard to get at, hollowed in the sandstone by the falling waters as
each torrent makes its way down from one ledge to the next.

The greatest altitude I noticed in the course of my surveys on the
plateaux of Erdébé was found in the water-parting between the slope
towards the Chad and the slope towards the Nile: it was of 3600 feet.
The highest summits in the neighbourhood rising only from 250 to 400
feet above the general level of the country, it may be estimated that
the chief altitudes of that region vary between 4000 and 4200 feet.
Twenty miles east of Koïnaména, in the transition zone between the
mountains and the plains, the altitudes of the bottom of the valley was
still superior to 3000 feet. It is possible, moreover, that 40 miles
away to the north-east certain summits of the water-parting rise to 5000
feet.

The natives who live a nomadic life on the plateaux of Erdébé amount in
number to several hundred families. Their settlement, meagre in the
extreme, usually consists of a few pieces of matting stretched on stakes
in a corner of a ravine, round a thorn enclosure in which their flock of
sheep and goats is shut up; at the slightest alarm men and beasts
stampede among the rocks. If I had to seek in the animal kingdom a term
of comparison for these tribes, I think I should choose their fellow-
denizen the jackal: they possess its cunning, its audacity, its
cowardice, its mischievousness, its endurance, its speed, and its
predatory instincts.

The only other wild animals we saw were gazelles, antelopes, and
ostriches; it is reported that as long as the above-mentioned pools
remain, boars, panthers, and lions may be found, but we had no
opportunity of testing the truth of this assertion.

On December 9, in the afternoon, having made preparations for our
departure next morning, we set free our prisoners, imposing no
conditions beyond that of telling their fellows our desire to see peace
and quiet reign throughout the country. “Let the nomads devote
themselves to the raising of their flocks and to trading in salt and
millet,” I said; “let them give up raiding the peaceful tribes of the
Sudan and the Nile, and the caravans that cross the desert, and I will
leave them at liberty in their mountains.” Whereupon an old woman
answered me, “We will carry your words faithfully to our husbands and
sons, and we will bid them come and submit to your authority; we are all
weary of our perpetual insecurity; we desire peace and justice. You have
treated us well, you have given us millet and meat; we have eaten all we
wanted to eat, and now we know that you are strong and generous. Allah
reward you!”

Alas! my reward was that for two years longer these inveterate brigands
did not cease raiding in every direction, and that the camel corps had a
particularly difficult task in guarding convoys and putting down
pillaging.

_Western Ennedi._—It only remained to me to cross the central part of
Ennedi in order to have a clear outline of the general physiognomy of
the country, thanks to the aid of surveys previously executed on its
western borders by several officers who had taken part in military
operations in Western Ennedi under the orders of Major Hilaire and Major
Colonna de Léca. With this end in view, I marched in the direction of
the military post of Fada by Boro and Archeï.

For a week our route lay through a maze of sandstone rocks where no
track existed, and through which our guides zigzagged from crest to
crest with remarkable sureness. Sometimes we made a long _détour_ to
cross a wadi near its source; sometimes we marched straight for the
obstacle, dropping down steep ledges that inspired little confidence in
our animals, or crossing difficult ridges that the camels could only
climb after being unloaded. Everywhere were narrow gorges and jagged
crests, with here and there a few leagues of easy going in the
neighbourhood of the temporary pools that usually marked the convergence
of certain important ravines.

In this uneven ground with its narrow horizons one pasture-ground
succeeded another, but we saw no trace of inhabitants. And yet water was
not wanting, whether in natural cisterns or in great pools like that of
Kossom Yasko. We skirted on the south the tableland of Basso, higher,
according to our guides, and harder to climb than that of Erdébé, but,
so far as I could judge at a guess, its height is not likely to be as
much as 5000 feet.

We took a day’s rest in the excellent pastures of Boro before leaving
the central plateau of Ennedi to drop down to the next level, 400 or 500
feet below. Then our way lay along a fine river of white sand, between
banks 60 or 80 yards high, where the traces of the last flow of water
could be seen 6 or 7 feet up the bank. The coming of the floods is so
sudden, and the banks so steep and smooth, that it is dangerous to take
that road in the rainy season. No winter passes without some heedless
wayfarers being surprised and carried away by the rushing torrent that
comes sweeping down the valley with the speed of a galloping horse.

After this splendid sand-road came a stretch of rocky going, followed by
a zone of waterfalls we had to get round by a march on the plateau. The
lower we got the more picturesque the landscape became; the cliffs,
gaining in height what we lost in altitude, grew more and more imposing,
the crests more jagged, the ridges more often broken by gaps. Isolated
peaks appeared here and there, whose pure outlines and bold summits put
climbing out of the question. On all sides there rose in the distance
rocks, some broad, some slender, but all of the same height and grouped
irregularly, so that sometimes, when very close together, they looked
like groups of men.

On the 17th of December we reached the foot of the last ledges, on the
western borders of Ennedi, at the altitude of about 1800 feet—that is to
say, about that of the depression separating Erdi from the plateaux of
Erdebe—and pitched our tents in the valley of Archeï, the most
picturesque of the beautiful valleys of the Ennedi. The century-long
erosion of wind and water, carving the great sandstone masses that line
the valley, lavished throughout the landscape the most admirable effects
of natural architecture. The approaches of the great grotto, above all,
and of the sheet of water teeming with little fish, were a pure delight
for the eyes: the sheer cliffs, fretted into colonnades crowned with
turrets and belfries, were burnt to tones of faded ochre that made the
blue of the sky seem deeper and more luminous still.

[Illustration: MOURDIA WOMEN AND CHILDREN, PLATEAU OF ERDÉBÉ (1000 m.),
ENNEDI]

[Illustration: THE FORT OF FADA, ENNEDI]

[Illustration: CAVES OF ARCHEÏ, ENNEDI]

From this exploration it became apparent that Ennedi is, roughly
speaking, a triangle covering about 12,000 square miles (30,000 square
kilometres). It consists of a succession of sandstone plateaux rising in
tiers from the base level of 1600 feet to that of 4300 and possibly even
4800 or 5000 feet in the parts of the country which had to be left out
of our investigations (Basso and eastern Erdébé). It falls by steep
slopes to the plains of the Libyan desert. The plateaux of Ennedi are
ravined by many valleys, most of them very deep, whose waters only flow
for a few days or weeks each year after the rains (August and
September). These waters hurl themselves from ledge to ledge in
waterfalls, hollowing out at the foot of each fall natural cisterns in
the rock, where the water remains a longer or shorter time according as
it is well or ill sheltered from the torrent beds. The roads usually
follow the torrent beds, except when blocked by masses of crumbled rock,
in which case a more or less awkward circuit has to be made. At the
points where the main valleys converge great muddy ponds are usually
formed, but they are shallow and short-lived. In all the valleys
splendid grazing-land is found, where not only camels but also thousands
of oxen could live if the problem of drinking-troughs did not present
itself every year in the height of the dry season. For at that moment
the natural cisterns that have still kept some store of water are grown
few in number, and are nearly always very hard to get at. Most of the
great temporary pools are dry, and subterranean water is no longer found
except in the great wadis, where the wells (that have to be dug out
afresh every year) go as deep as 20 or 25 yards.

The inhabitants of Ennedi, nomads or semi-nomads, are very poor; the
chief tribes are the Bideyats (or Annas), the Gaedas, and the Mourdias,
which all together represent hardly more than 2000 souls. But they are
by tradition so addicted to brigandage and so untamable that as large a
troop of police is needed to keep them in hand as for a population of
40,000 in the settled regions.

Ennedi has no vegetable food resources; there are neither palm
plantations, nor native gardens, nor millet fields. And yet the soil is
more fertile than in Borkou and the periods of drought shorter. The
chief agricultural interest of the region lies in its excellent pasture,
where the camels find abundant provender of very good quality.

_In Mortcha._—From Archei I went to the post of Fada, 40 miles or so to
the north-west, for a few days’ rest, after which I undertook a new
series of reconnaissances westwards, for the purpose of exploring the
still imperfectly known desert regions of northern Mortcha, too often
visited by the raids of the refractory tribes. I was thus enabled during
the early days of January 1915 to trace the course of the temporary
rivers that receive the waters from the western slopes of Ennedi. For a
few days every year these rivers roll down a volume of water sufficient
to stop the march of caravans and convoys for a longer or shorter time,
and continue their course for 200 or 300 kilometres before each of them
reaches the pool in which it ends. As they have not force enough to go
further, all one finds beyond the terminal pool is a valley-way more or
less clearly marked, and blocked with sand from place to place, but
still visible for fairly long distances. It has been concluded that they
formerly ran into the ancient lake of Djourab, the level of which is
from 200 to 300 yards lower. The most interesting of these rivers from
the geographical point of view is the wadi Soala, which in the central
and lower parts of its course separates the granitic zone of Mortcha
from the sandstone of Ennedi.

The whole region is one succession of good grazing-grounds for camels,
but which can be made use of only a few months a year while there is
water in the temporary pools. The one that lasts longest, that of
Elléla, in which the wadi Oum-Hadjar comes to an end, is not entirely
dry till April or May when the annual rains have been normal, in which
case it makes direct communication possible between Borkou and Wadaï.

_Between Ennedi and Borkou._—I next set out northwards from Ennedi in
the direction of Madadi and Wadi-Doum, which had been adopted for the
time being as their headquarters by some rebel bands from Tibesti, which
attacked indifferently the caravans from Wadaï going to Arouelli for
salt and our unescorted convoys of supplies circulating between the
posts of Faya, Fada, and Ounianga. At the moment when I arrived in the
neighbourhood they had just carried out successfully several of these
surprise attacks, and were making off to their mountains to get their
booty into a safe place. Unable to go after them, for my camels,
exhausted by three months’ reconnoitring and hard fare, could not
challenge those of the rebels for speed, I decided to return without
delay to Faya to organize reprisals.

On the way I passed through a low-lying zone of country once occupied by
lakes and marshes of considerable extent and of about 1000 feet in
altitude, or 250 or 300 feet higher than the region of the ancient lakes
of Borkou and Djourab, with which it is connected by a continuous
valley, the bed of which, very clearly visible in places, is often
buried in sand. This lake-zone seems to be the end of the great
depression I had crossed two months earlier, between the massifs of Erdi
and Ennedi. Except in the immediate neighbourhood of the springs of
Madadi and around the permanent pool of the Wadi Doum (or Touhou) the
soil is absolutely barren, consisting either of very pure siliceous sand
or of soft friable earth, whitish in colour and as fine as flour, into
which we sank to the ankles at every step, raising thick clouds of
stifling dust. Towards the south stretched chains of shifting sand-
dunes, separating that depression from the last foothills of Ennedi,
while to the north extended endless rocky terraces, in which were
hollowed here and there basins of 1 or 2 square miles, wells of water
impregnated with soda.

_The Holy War._—The Turco-Senoussist propaganda against the French and
English was beginning to make its pernicious effects felt among the
nomads of Borkou and Ennedi. The easy successes achieved by the rebels
against caravans and convoys unprotected by escorts had just given them
a great idea of their military power, and increased their numbers and
audacity. The withdrawal towards their base of the Italian forces in
Tripoli, and particularly the abandonment of Mourzouk, where a
Senoussist governor had taken up his residence, had inflamed the minds
of the Toubous, whose warlike ardour had never burnt so fiercely: it
seemed to them likely that a backward movement of the French occupying
Tibesti, Borkou, and Ennedi would speedly take place if their
commissariat lines were seriously threatened in the direction of Lake
Chad and Wadaï. Turkey’s entrance into the war on the side of Germany
against France and England had counterbalanced the successes won over
the Germans in the Cameroons and deeply stirred the imaginations of
these devout Mohammedans, who refused to recognize any other chief than
the distant Sultan of Stamboul, Caliph of the Prophet and Commander of
the Faithful. And one after another the Duzzas of Borkou, the Gouras of
Gouro, the Arnas of Tibesti, and the Gaïdas of Ennedi fell from their
allegiance.

Now, at that moment the requirements of the escort-service for our
convoys of supplies were such that out of the hundred and sixty men of
each of my companies in Borkou and Ennedi, less than twenty rifles were
sometimes left to guard the posts of Faya and Fada. It was hardly before
the month of April 1915, when the food-transport was almost finished,
that it became possible to remedy this dispersal of our forces and
organize the punitive expeditions rendered indispensable by the
incessant raids of the rebels. That task was an awkward one, for we were
short of good camels and above all of good agents of information, while
our elusive adversary was kept acquainted with our slightest movement by
certain elements of the population theoretically faithful to us.

It would evidently have been too much for us to hope that we should
speedily obtain the submission of the malcontents, given the very
considerable extent of their space for movements of all kinds, and also
their extreme mobility; but we could henceforth return blow for blow,
chase them to their mountain lairs, and give them the impression that,
after playing for some time the pleasant part of hunters, they were
henceforth going to play the much less pleasant one of game.

One after another Captains Lauzanne and Châteauvieux, Lieutenants Lafage
and Calinon, at the head of mixed detachments of regular soldiers and
Arab and Toubou auxiliaries, made their way into the wildest fastnesses
of Eastern Tibesti, Borkou, and Ennedi. Captain Lauzanne, in particular,
succeeded in tracking the Gourmas into the distant solitudes of Ouri,
200 miles north of Gouro, at the foot of the eastern spurs of the
Tibesti, and after them their cousins the Koussadas into the very crater
of Emi Koussi, till then regarded as impregnable. The fame of these two
expeditions was noised abroad in the country to such an extent that by
the end of the month of July the general situation of Borkou had greatly
improved, and we could turn our thoughts to the consolidation of our
prestige by an offensive action against the rebels of Miski, and by a
junction of our troops with those of Zouar and Bardaï, the two military
posts entrusted with the supervision and pacification of western and
central Tibesti.


=7. Exploration of Tibesti.=


In the month of September 1916 I was authorized to proceed from Borkou
to Tibesti for the purpose of getting in touch with the rebel tribes who
intended to attack the caravans fitted out in Kanem and Wadaï for the
carrying of supplies to the garrisons of Borkou and Ennedi. The garrison
of Tibesti was to attempt, to the best of its ability, to co-operate
with this action in such a way that the hostile bands, threatened at
once on the south, the west, and the north, might either be induced to
submit or else to disperse in the eastern part of the Tibestian massif,
the part furthest away from the region to be traversed by our convoys of
supplies.

The rebels were comparatively few in number—about 2000 combatants—and
divided into clans living in different regions; but they were of extreme
mobility, well armed, and abundantly supplied with ammunition. Their
tactics, which were very skilful, consisted in avoiding on all occasions
a fight in the open, in hiding in the labyrinth of their well-nigh
inaccessible rocks to fire at short range on the enemy when he passed
near enough, in decamping at top speed to hide again a little further
on, and so draw little groups of adversaries in the direction of death-
traps, where of course well-planned ambuscades lay in wait for them.

The strength of the reconnoitring detachment was forty-four black
soldiers, officered by four Europeans—one of them a doctor—and
accompanied by some thirty auxiliaries (guides, goumiers,[1] camel
drivers, and servants). It carried food for two months, and the barrels
and skins required for three days’ water. The train included about 120
camels.

The mountainous country to be crossed set an extremely awkward problem:
many points where water would have to be found were often hard for the
camels to reach. Pasture-grounds were rare and scanty. The tracks,
inexistent or deceptive, would now stretch away across successive heaps
of sharp-edged pebbles, and now twist and turn endlessly along winding
torrent beds, deep sunk between sheer banks. To cross from one valley to
the next one had to climb a succession of cliff ledges, rising tier on
tier to several hundred metres by the merest suggestion of paths winding
along the sides of spurs formed by the rolling down of _débris_ from
above; when the slopes grew too steep, the baggage had to be carried up
from one shelf to the next on men’s heads. Our camels, used to the easy
going of the great sandy plains, were discouraged by the asperities of
the sharp-angled rocks, by the narrow ledges, the steep and slippery
steps, the loose pebbles, the excessively sharp turns; and so only short
distances could be covered in spite of long hours under way and intense
fatigue.

It goes without saying that we had no sort of map of these unknown
regions, and that we were utterly at the mercy of the guides whom by
good or evil fortune the patrols put at our disposition. Accordingly,
the choice of our routes was dictated to us at once by the necessity of
reducing to a minimum the efforts and privations of our camels and by
that of keeping within the limits familiar to our ordinary and
occasional guides. It may be added that the latter showed the utmost
unwillingness to lead us into regions where the unsubdued tribes
habitually take refuge; for these tribes are in the habit of holding
them responsible, on their own heads and those of the members of their
families, for all the harm and losses incurred when fights arise with
our detachments.

The general plan of this series of operations included, first of all,
the reconnoitring of Emi Koussi, an extinct volcano 3400 metres high,
followed by an inroad into the valley of Miski, the usual meeting-ground
of the Tibestian freebooters threatening the roads to Kanem. The central
position of the valley is strengthened by the natural shelter afforded
by high mountains and almost impassable rocky foothills, through which
lead only two defiles, both of them long and dangerous.

From Miski I meant to make a rapid plunge into the valley of Yebbi, in
the heart of central Tibesti, firstly to try to get into connection with
a detachment of the garrison of Bardai, and then to make an attempt to
reach the plateaux of Goumeur. Lastly, I thought I might be able to get
over on to the western slope of the massif, explore its chief valleys,
and effect a junction with the Zouar camel corps before returning to
Borkou. I succeeded in carrying out this programme in its main lines,
except for the operation in the direction of Goumeur, which had to be
replaced at the last minute by a reconnaissance pushed as far as the
post of Bardai. I was away, in all, for seventy-two days, or barely a
fortnight in excess of my estimate.

_From the Plains of Borkou to the Foot of Emi Koussi._—The name of
Borkou is given by geographers to the group of low-lying stretches of
country separating the mountain mass of Tibesti from that of Ennedi; it
was confined at first to the depression, some 10 kilometres wide by 100
in length, that extends from east to west, from Faya to Ain Galakka.

This hollow was long filled by a lake, of which numerous and conclusive
traces are still found: beds of lake shells, whole skeletons of fishes
up to a yard and half long, calcareous crust covering long streaks of
rock, platforms of white clay marking the line of flats where the last
pools left by the waters of the former lake have held out longest before
drying up, and so forth. This lake was fed by mighty watercourses,
coming down from the mountains of Tibesti and Ennedi; it poured its
overflow through the valley of the Jurab into the Kirri, the deepest,
largest, and most recently dried up among the ancient lakes and lowlands
of the Chad.

From Borkou to Emi Koussi there is a large choice of routes. The best,
owing to the number of points at which water and pasturage may be found,
is that which passes by way of Yarda to Yono. Hereabouts we leave behind
the region of the oases characterized by numerous depressions in which
water is found close to the soil in practically unlimited quantities, in
wells less than a yard deep and in salt pools. From that point one
enters the rocky zone where there is no more water underground, but only
natural cisterns forming reservoirs with the water that streams down
into them, and dries up a longer or shorter time after the passage of
the accidental rains that filled them.

The general look of the country is fairly uniform. It is a vast
sandstone plateau sloping from north to south, ravined with narrow
gullies running in a general direction from north-east to south-west,
and which are real rivers of sand in which the shifting dunes pile
themselves up and overlap to the point of being impassable at times to
laden beasts of burden. This direction, from north-east to south-west,
being that of the prevailing wind in Borkou, the parallelism of these
gullies and the general appearance of the landscape give colour to the
supposition that they were hollowed out of the sandstone by the erosive
action of the dunes driven before the wind.

The rocky plateau is commanded at intervals by a few blackish peaks of
low relief, among which the most noticeable are those of Kazzar, near
Yarda, 75 metres above the surrounding country; Olochi, near Dourkou,
130 metres; Ehi Kourri, near Kouroudi, 350 metres in relief. From the
height of these natural observatories nothing is to be seen, in whatever
direction one turns, but vast dark-tinted expanses strewn with stones,
where no sort of topographical order can be discerned. So confused and
scattered are the rocky masses that the impression they leave is less
that of a sequence of alternating plateaux and valleys than of a chaos
of disconnected reefs rising above a sea of sand, amid breakers of
billowy dunes. Much going and coming was needed before I could form an
exact notion of the physiognomy of these regions, for the fact is that
their valleys are more or less blocked, at longish intervals, by heaps
of rock debris and sand, and so divided into a succession of elongated
hollows communicating only by subterranean infiltration. In these
hollows may be found, here and there, layers of shells that enable us to
fix the period when they were still underwater at a comparatively recent
and no doubt Quaternary epoch. From place to place there still exist
permanent salt pools, of greater or less depth, and usually at the foot
of the cliffs that shut in some of these valleys on the east. One
supposes that the strong back draughts of the north-east wind have
mainly concentrated their action on those points of the surface where
the sandstone was softest; in the excavations thus produced the sheet of
subterranean water has been able to make its appearance in the open air,
and under the influence of a persistent evaporation, due to the extreme
dryness of the air and the intensity of the solar heat, the salts in
solution in the water have undergone a progressive concentration,
sometimes to the point of floating on the surface of the pool with the
appearance of translucent blocks of ice.


Having left Faya on September 4 we arrived on the 11th at the foot of
Emi Koussi, 125 miles to the north, passing on our way by Korou Koranga,
where we renewed our supply of water. The spot is one of the most
picturesque I saw during this journey to Tibesti; it is a natural
cistern hollowed by the action of the falling waters in the deep and
narrow bed of the wadi Elleboe, a torrential river that comes down from
Emi Koussi. The way to it lies through a defile more than a mile long,
so narrow that two men cannot walk abreast. The water lies at the bottom
of a grotto, dark in spite of being open to the sky, and whose walls
wind in and out in such a way that not only the drying desert winds
cannot get to it, but that even the sun’s rays only penetrate to it for
a few minutes each day about noon, and only get down to the level of the
water during May and July, when the sun reaches the local zenith. I had
neither the time nor the means to measure the length and depth, the
approach between precipitous walls being so difficult; but the supply of
water is such that the cistern has never been dry so long as the guides
can remember, however long may have been the drought during which the
torrent has ceased to flow; the water stays clear, cool, and pleasant to
the taste, without the slightest salty flavour.

The cistern of Derso, on the contrary, at the foot of Emi Koussi, near
the pasturage of Yono, is broad, spacious, and subject to the drying
action of sun and winds; a score of yards deep, it is easy to get at;
but its greenish water, stagnant and thick with organic matter, has to
be filtered before it can be drunk without disgust, and a period of
twelve or fifteen months’ drought is usually enough to dry it up
altogether.

_Ascent of Emi Koussi._—In all probability the rebels of the regions we
had just come through had withdrawn towards their strongholds on the top
of Emi Koussi. A light detachment was sent out to make sure that this
was so, while the greater number of our camels were left to rest in the
pasturage of Yono, where I had a little zeriba built for the storage of
our baggage and provisions and the security of the men I left to guard
them.

On the morning of September 13 we betook ourselves to the ascent of the
mountain by a track strewn with boulders, the gradient being fairly easy
for the first five hours’ march, as far as the salt springs of Erra
Shounga. From that point it stiffened, and grew very steep indeed
between 6000 and 9000 feet. The last part of the ascent to the entrance
of the pass that leads into the interior of the crater required the
utmost effort on the part of our camels, unaccustomed as they were to
the going in mountainous countries.

Sixteen or eighteen hours must be allowed to reach the summit of the
ancient volcano, and one does well to spread them over two days if one
does not want to leave any camels on the way. The first stage should get
one to Fada, a little pasturage at the bottom of a ravine accessible to
camels, and where the animals should be allowed to rest and feed.
Afterwards a fairly long halt should be made at an altitude of about
6000 feet, to renew the supply of water at the natural cistern of
Lantai-Kourou, for there is no hope of finding water in the interior of
the crater; the operation is a long and toilsome one, for the track
leading to the reservoir is inaccessible except to men. Along the whole
way there is hardly any vegetation, such as there is being confined to
deep ravines, almost always inaccessible, except at the pasturage of
Fada, on account of the steepness of their sides. Towards the foot of
the mountain only stunted plants are to be found, with tiny leaves often
sharpened into thorns; while nearer the top the boughs are thicker, the
bark tenderer, the sap more abundant, and the leaves longer and greener.
No trees are to be found on Emi Koussi in the crater itself; on the
other hand, the herbaceous vegetation is comparatively abundant, and
marked especially by the “erendi,” a yellow-flowered plant reminding one
of the St. John’s wort of our regions. We bivouacked, in a good position
for observing all the approaches, in the midst of these bright-hued
flowers, and I cannot tell you with what fascinated eyes we gazed on
them, for none of us had seen their like for three long years.

The temperature was mild and cool like that of a fine spring in France;
but in the clear sky there were no birds, and the sight of the scowling
cliffs around us soon broke the charm under which our fancy would have
gladly lingered.

We stayed only three days in the crater of Emi Koussi. The afternoon of
the first day was devoted to the exploration of a pit, 300 yards deep
and 2 miles in diameter, which was once the chimney of the volcano. A
vast expanse of carbonate of soda covers the bottom, which one can reach
only by a very steep path.

The second day was spent, firstly in exploring, both inside and out, the
western slopes of the crater, where there is a natural cistern that
enabled us to make a fresh provision of water, though the track leading
to the reservoir is very perilous for the camels; and afterwards in
taking certain measurements, such as the height of the cliffs and the
depth and extent of the central pit, called by the natives Era-Kohor, or
Natron Hole.

The third day was given up to explorations in several directions, which
allowed us to visit some recently abandoned troglodyte villages, to
capture two prisoners, and to reach the summit of the northern side of
the volcano, a point from which the whole of the Tibestian mountains can
be seen.

The evenings, nights, and mornings were icy-cold, though the thermometer
never fell below freezing-point. Our camels, taken aback by the novelty
of the grass offered them, cropped it very sparsely; our provisions were
giving out, and the rebels had fled before our arrival into
exceptionally difficult mountainous tracts, where we could not dream of
following them. In a word, in spite of the geographical interest there
would have been in prolonging our stay on the summit of Emi Koussi, when
the fourth day came we had to think about getting back to Yono.

[Illustration: STEEP SLOPES ON THE FLANK OF EMI KOUSSI, TIBESTI]

[Illustration: THE GREAT CLIFF, TIBESTI]

[Illustration: NATURAL CISTERN OF DERSO AT THE FOOT OF EMI KOUSSI]

[Illustration: THE CRATER OF EMI KOUSSI (3400 m.), TIBESTI]

From this excursion on the highest peak of the highest mountain in the
Sahara I brought away an abiding impression of wild magnificence, and
most of all when one’s thoughts go back to the panorama of the Tibestian
mountains. There may, I fear, be something of presumption in attempting
even a short description; still, I will ask your permission to make a
short extract from my diary on the day in question:

“. . . Continuing our march northwards, we soon reach the foot of the
cliffs of the northern wall, where, by a natural staircase, nearly 600
feet in height, one can reach the Tiribon pass, through which run the
difficult paths that lead to Miski, Tozeur, and Goumeur.

“In front of us the volcano slopes steeply downwards, leaving open to
view the Tibestian massif with the endless succession of points of its
serrated ridges outlined against the sky and stretching away out of
sight. On our left the crater-wall loses itself in a confused mass of
rocks, while on the right rise a number of sharp peaks, one of which
seems to be the culminating point of this part of the ring of heights
that shut in the volcano.

“A last effort got us to the top of this lofty summit, 10,000 feet above
the sea, where we found a narrow platform strewn with boulders, with big
clusters of red and lilac tinted flowers growing in the gaps between the
stones. Toilsomely enough, I managed to scramble on to the highest rock,
and as I stood on it, there lay before my eyes, for the first time, the
mysterious Tibestian chains that no explorer had ever gazed on yet in
their majestic entirety. The grandeur and beauty of the sight so far
outdid all I had anticipated that I could not turn my eyes from watching
the harmonious hues thrown over the landscape by the rays of the
declining sun. The intense clearness of the air made it easy to see
distinctly the remotest peaks; all around lay long ridges, their
successive summits rising and falling in regular points like lace;
scattered rocks, deep gorges, dizzy precipices, jagged peaks. Each
mountain range, though all were turned by the sun to the purest rose
colour, had its distinct shade, brightest in the foreground, softening
into mauve as distance melted into distance away to the far horizon.

“Eastwards, the Tibestian massifs fell by giant steps whose sharp-angled
lines, blurred by the first shadows of the waning day, ran into one
another in inextricable tangles; while to the west the mountains
bordered an endless plain, a forbidding waste of stones, over which
brooded and deepened a gloom that threw into beautiful contrast the
rosy-mantled chains whose lofty summits soared into a sky of calm and
exquisite blue.”

Tearing myself away, not without reluctance, from the dreamy fancies
called up by all these glories, I made haste to take a few observations
with compass and thermometer and make a few notes. The Tibestian reliefs
appeared to me to be included in a right angle, the apex of which is
marked by the volcano, and the two sides by the directions W.N.W. and
N.N.E.; such being the case, the appearance of Tibesti was totally
different from what I had till then supposed it to be, on the strength
of the statements put forward by the explorer Nachtigal. The rest of my
journey was to afford me the opportunity of unravelling the skeins of
the succession of ranges, whose apparent position and extent I could now
approximately fix.

On September 18, towards noon, we struck camp, to go down again into the
plain by the route we had followed on our upward march. While the
camels, weary and emaciated, were painfully climbing the slopes of the
pass leading out of the volcano, I took a last all-embracing look at
this huge crater, 10,000 feet above the sea; few others in the world are
so immense, for it is 5 miles wide and 8 miles long, and looks like a
gigantic funnel, almost elliptical in outline, 25 miles round and 800
yards deep; on all sides it is shut in by a rampart of unbroken wall,
rising sheer almost everywhere for 500 or 600 feet, and which can be got
over only at two points, by openings that are very hard to reach.

Behind this tremendous natural bulwark, 200 or 300 Koussadas live
miserably, after the manner of cave-dwellers, divided into two clans,
and possessing only a few camels, asses, and goats, and a small number
of date palms in the neighbourhood of a few barely accessible springs
dispersed here and there about the outer slopes of the volcano. Their
staple food is a wild herb, the “Mouni,” that grows among the rocks, and
yields a coarse flour that looks like coal-dust; and in the plains at
the foot of Emi Koussi they collect the seeds of a sort of bitter gourd,
the “hamdal,” which become eatable after undergoing a long preparation
intended to take away their extremely bitter taste. At times they
procure meat by hunting the “Meschi,” a kind of wild sheep which is only
to be met with in the high mountains, and of which throughout my journey
I did not see a single specimen. They are supplied with stuffs, arms,
and ammunition by the Senoussists of Koufra, to whom, profiting by the
cool season, they bring goats in exchange; but the greater part of their
scanty resources comes from the brigandage they practised until quite
recently, with more or less success, on the routes that lead from Kanem
to Borkou and Bilma. Untiring on the look-out, though not particularly
brave fighters, they succeeded in keeping up an unremitting watch on our
movements during our exploration, and in this way they were able to get
possession of one of our camels, too tired to keep up with us when we
came down again towards the pasture-land of Yono.

We got back to our bivouac on September 20, and I had to stay there
nearly a week to let the camels recuperate and to give them time to get
better of the wounds to their feet caused by the sharp edges of the
boulders they had had to walk on during that expedition.

I spent the week’s rest in making calculations drawn from my different
observations, and in exploring the hot springs of Yi-Erra, highly
esteemed in the whole region for their medicinal virtues. Their
temperature is 100·5° Fahr. (38·1° Cent.), and their flow of water by no
means abundant. They can only be approached on foot and by a difficult
path, in about an hour: their altitude is 3100 feet above the sea.

_Central Tibesti._—When our camels had had a rest and feed in the
pasture-lands of Yono, I decided to transfer my quarters to the great
valley of Miski, 100 miles further north, skirting the western foot of
Emi Koussi. This valley of Miski is one of the most important of the
Tibestian massif, not in the matter of its alimentary products, which
hardly exist, but from a military point of view, for the Tibestian
rebels use it as a convenient meeting-place from which—with no great
difficulty and without our knowledge—they can attack our southern and
western lines of communication. In the course of our march (between 25
September and 1 October 1915) our patrols had a few small engagements
with the rebels, and some prisoners were taken who supplied us with
useful information: the Toubous, informed that our expedition was on the
march, were gathering their crop of dates—though the dates were not
fully ripe—and meant to seek refuge 100 miles further north-east, in the
Tarso of Ouri.

The pasture-lands of Miski were already abandoned by the rebels, and so
we were able to march without fighting through the two long passes that
command the entrance to the valley. A number of reconnoitring patrols
showed us the exactitude of the information mentioned above, except in
respect of the palm plantation of Modra, where Lieut. Fouché’s
detachment, consisting of only fifteen men, had to put up a pretty hard
fight in order to avoid being surrounded and cut to pieces.

The scarcity of food and the jaded condition of part of my camels forced
me at this point to divide my forces and send part of them back to
Borkou, after planning a new route. I remained alone with my secretary
and thirty black soldiers to go on with my exploration of the heart of
the unknown Tibesti. My aim was to effect a junction with the troops of
Bardai in the valley of Yebbi, and to explore the gorges of Kozen and
Goumeur in the east of the massif, where several rebellious tribes had
taken refuge.

I left Miski on October 4, and on the 6th I reached the watershed
between the basins of the Chad and the Mediterranean. At sunset I
reached the Mohi pass, 5000 feet high, but the gathering darkness
prevented me making as good use (topographically speaking) of my
presence at this spot as I should have been able to do if I had arrived
there in full daylight. In that case, I might have climbed a commanding
height of apparently easy ascent situated 2 or 3 miles east of the pass,
from which position I should have been able to grasp the general
character of this orographic centre. As it was, I had to cover the few
miles that lay between us and the palm plantations of Yebbi in complete
darkness, partly in the evening, and partly on the following morning.
But through a mistake made by the guide it was only at half-past six
that we saw the first palm tree, at the bottom of a dark valley shut in
between almost vertical walls from 700 to 1500 feet high. The landscape
on every side was inky black and beyond all expression desolate; the
valley was covered with dark boulders, glistening in the sun; no trace
of green could be seen, except two thin lines of palms bordering a
stagnant watercourse hardly a dozen yards wide. High mountains were
visible to the east, rising (so far as I could judge) to 6000 or 7000
feet.

To get down to the bottom of the valley there was only a narrow track
littered with sharp blocks, on which our camels did not know where to
set their feet. The vanguard that covered our toilsome descent was
already exchanging shots with the Toubous, but was finally able to get
possession of the palm grove; towards 9 o’clock we could pitch our
tents, with no more fighting to do. A few goats and donkeys were our
only booty. But soon there appeared three prisoners, almost naked, whose
pitiable physical condition was strangely in keeping with the appalling
wretchedness of a landscape that one might have taken for a vision of
hell. They were miserable slaves, stolen by the Toubous during their
forays against the inhabitants of Kanem and Wadai. Their state of mind
was no better than that of their bodies, and there was little to be got
out of them about the country and its inhabitants. At any rate, they
enabled us to unearth a few hiding-places where we found some dates, a
great boon to the members of the expedition, whose rations were growing
daily shorter.

Towards 11 o’clock a Toubou envoy came, sent by the rebels to make terms
for their submission; I offered very easy ones, and treated them with
consideration. After half an hour’s interview, I sent him back to the
rebels on whose behalf he had come, but waited in vain for his return
till evening.

Towards five in the afternoon I struck camp to seek a bivouac for the
night, in a better position than the death-trap where we had spent the
afternoon, and we halted, in complete darkness and without lighting
fires, on a rocky platform that gave us 300 or 400 yards of open ground
to fire over on all sides. Thanks to these measures, we were able to
spend the rest of the night in peace.

Next day we went a little further down the valley in search of pasturage
for our camels, worn out with hunger and fatigue; their condition left
small hope of undertaking the excursion I had planned in the direction
of Kozen and Goumeur, from which we were still separated by two or three
ridges very difficult to cross, and where—so at least our prisoners
said—neither pasture nor water could be found in readily accessible
situations. When it is added that I had no news of the Bardai detachment
which I had hoped to meet there, it will be understood that I thought
best to advance in its direction two days’ march further west, into the
valley of Zoumri, where I was informed of the presence of friendly
tribes who could probably supply me with some information about its
movements.

These two marches were very hard on our animals. To cross from one
valley to the other we had to make our way up a wearisome succession of
ravines and steep slopes, one of which, on the sides of a spur of a
precipitous cliff, cost the detachment a hard piece of work in making a
flight of rough steps up which the camels, though completely unloaded,
had the utmost difficulty in climbing. On the other hand, I had the good
luck to see before me, on the east and north-east, a vast horizon of
mountains which extended and confirmed the observations made on the
summit of Emi Koussi, and made certain that the Tibestian massif, far
from being limited to the simple mountain chain hitherto marked on the
maps of Africa, stretched away for more than 100 miles into the interior
of the Lybian desert. During the two hours required for the hard climb
up this cliff I kept on taking observations of the numerous summits
visible in the limpid distances of that ocean of rocks, summits that
seemed to rise like a succession of landmarks along each of two or three
long ridges in sharp and jagged peaks, equal in bulk and perhaps in
height with those of the great western chain, of which a few outlines
appeared in the gaps between the nearer ranges. But in face of this
accumulation of lofty peaks I felt a bitter vexation, a sort of
resentment against my own littleness and powerlessness to set in order
their apparent chaos. For it would have needed many a long excursion
made with two or three fresh camel-trains, and a further provision of
supplies, to enable me to straighten out the seeming tangle of these
valleys and the confusing intersection of the hills.

Towards eight o’clock in the morning we resumed our westward march,
skirting on the north an isolated mountain more than 8000 feet high, the
Toh de Zoumri, which by its conical outline and the circular shape of
its top looks like an old volcano, a supposition I had not time to
verify. Our route crossed numerous tracks converging towards the
mountains, which were used as a refuge by large numbers of Têda rebels,
subjects of the former Dordeï of Bardai, whose revolt was aided by the
encouragement and the supplies of arms and ammunition furnished by the
Turco-Senoussists. Next day, October 11, we entered the valley of Zoumri
by a pass 4800 feet high, and towards ten o’clock we bivouacked near the
palm plantation of Yountiou, where I was hoping to meet with friendly
Têdas who would put me in touch with the commander of the Bardai post.
Unfortunately the village was deserted.

This fresh disappointment caused me little or no surprise; I expected my
coming to Miski and thence to Yebbi to be known by all the hillmen, and
that our skirmishes with the rebels would have been related with no
small exaggeration as mighty combats; still, I felt that I was too near
the goal to give up the attempt to reach it, so I sent out patrols to
scour the neighbourhood and especially to capture a few Têdas who could
guide me towards Bardai. Presently an old woman was brought to me,
gaunt, stooping, and half crippled, but with intelligent eyes. After
long reticence she confided to me that she was the mother of the chief
of that village, and that her son had gone over to the French a few
weeks earlier. Messengers had come during the two preceding days,
announcing the coming of an expedition from Borkou, and when that
morning the watchers saw our camels at the summit of the pass, all the
Têdas—men, women, and children—fled panic-stricken into the neighbouring
rocks; she alone had remained hidden in the palm plantation, because she
said she was too feeble to follow them and too old to be afraid of
death. I calmed her fears about my intentions as best I could, telling
her that all the Têdas who submitted to French authority could count on
my good will, and urging her to bring me her son as soon as she could,
promising her that she should be treated with friendship and
consideration; but as I had to continue my journey to Bardai as soon as
possible, she must understand that I should be obliged to procure guides
by force if I could not get them otherwise. “You shall have a guide to
take you to Bardai,” she said, “and, if it please Allah, without needing
to use your guns; I will go and tell my son.” Soon after there came up a
little man with the same intelligent eyes, young and timid looking. He
handed me the certificate of submission given him only a few days before
by the officer commanding the French forces in Tibesti. After a fairly
long talk he declared himself ready to serve me, but begged me not to
insist on trying to get any other men of his village, for they were
grimly determined to stay in their hiding-places. I trusted him, and was
rewarded for doing so, for he stayed at my disposition upwards of a
week, and thanks to his knowledge of the country I was able to go on
with my exploration as rapidly as possible, and to collect interesting
geographical information about the regions that lay off the track of my
journey. To go to Bardai we had only to follow the sandy bed of the
dried-up river, along which from time to time we passed by palm
plantations and villages, the headmen of which came to bid me welcome,
pleading their poverty as an excuse for not offering me the customary
presents. After twelve hours’ march, when I had just passed through the
village of Zoui, I met Lieut. Blaizot, commanding the troops of Tibesti,
coming on foot to meet and welcome me and to express his regret that he
had not been able, for want of camels, to come to Zoumri and Yebbi to
help me against the rebels. To see him and to listen to his voice as he
spoke were a great joy to me. In spite of all difficulties, I had just
effected the junction so long desired between the troops of Borkou and
those of Tibesti; in a few more minutes I was going at last to enter the
palm plantation of Bardai that I had been dreaming of seeing for twenty
years, ever since I had read in Nachtigal’s impressive story of his
travels about the difficulties he had to get over in order to enter it
forty-six years before, and above all to get out of it alive. On the way
I had been able to make a mass of observations, topographical, geodetic,
and hypsometric, and to fix with a very satisfactory degree of precision
the situation and height of the chief summits of the great western chain
that Nachtigal had only been able to locate by guesswork, and often
without having even seen them.

At Bardai, where I arrived on October 13 a little before noon, I stayed
only twenty-four hours, for I was in a hurry to get back to Miski, where
the little detachment left in charge of the broken-down camels and of my
last reserves of food must have been in a situation of some insecurity
since the 10th. During the afternoon of the 13th I was able to examine
in detail with the commander of the garrison the various questions
regarding the means of combining the efforts of the troops of Borkou and
those of the Tibesti against the rebels. The night having been
favourable to my astronomical observations and the morning to
measurements of angles on the principal peaks visible from Bardai, I had
been able in that short space of time to collect all the essential
elements needed for fixing on the map with satisfactory exactitude the
position of the most important points of Central Tibesti.

The geographical interest of my journey to Bardai did not consist solely
in the discovery, to the east of the great chain traversed by Nachtigal,
of mountains whose existence had not previously been suspected; it was
greatly enhanced by the fact that my observations corrected serious
errors of position and altitude committed by the famous German explorer
on the itinerary he followed amid so many hardships. Thus, for example,
in the site of Bardai there is an error of 50 miles in latitude and 30
in longitude; it is nearer 3000 than 2500 feet above sea-level; the
height of the peaks of Toussidé and Timi is as much as 10,000 feet; the
name of Tarso, which Nachtigal restricts to the massif he traversed, is
a general term applied by the Tibestians to all mountainous regions
consisting of high plateaux difficult of access, but on which the going
is easy when once one has climbed to the top. Lastly, to the east of
Bardai, instead of the great zone of plains shown on the maps there lies
a succession of important massifs the culminating point of which rises
as high as 8000 feet above the sea.

Refusing, albeit with extreme reluctance, to listen to the urgent
insistence of my amiable host Lieut. Blaizot, I left the post of Bardai
on the evening of October 14, and by a moonlight march lasting almost
all night I was able to get back on the 15th to my bivouac at Yountiou
to make the observations, astronomical and other, requisite for checking
those of the previous days; from that point I counted on returning to
Miski, not by the already reconnoitred route passing through Yebbi, but
by the Modra route lying further west, which was to afford me the
opportunity of reconnoitring another passage. But a piece of news had
just come which very much upset my Têda guide Mohammed: there had been
fighting in the Modra valley between the Borkou troops and the hillmen,
and he had very little fancy for guiding me through that region, where
my detachment would presumably have to fight its way by main force. For
me, on the contrary, it was a further reason for insisting on going
there with all speed, in order to afford my companions, if need was, the
help of the thirty rifles of my detachment.

Mohammed allowed himself to be convinced by the promise of a suitable
reward, and by the use of certain outer and visible signs indicating
clearly that he did not guide me of his own free will: he adjusted a
cord loosely round his neck, and one of my black soldiers seized hold of
the other end. In the eyes of his own people his Têda honour was safe,
and his responsibility for the consequences of the subsequent
proceedings reduced to vanishing-point.

Mohammed guided us to perfection; the chain was crossed on the second
day by the pass of Kidomma at an altitude of more than 6000 feet, and on
the evening of the third day, after a very tiring march, we reached the
point where the track leaves the plateau to go down into the bottom of
the Modra valley. We got down a first drop of some 60 yards without very
much trouble, in spite of the quarters of sharp-edged rock that rolled
under the hesitating feet of our camels. Then, after perhaps a third of
a mile of almost level going, I suddenly came in sight of the palm
plantation of Modra lying at the bottom of a dark narrow gorge deep
sunken between two almost vertical walls more than 1500 feet high.

I was not without uneasiness at this sight, and came within a very
little of thinking that the worthy Mohammed had deliberately lured me
into some trap when he had said to me: “The descent into the Modra
valley is rather difficult, but good camels can get down.” The descent
into the valley of Yebbi, which I had found so arduous eleven days
previously, seemed to me now quite a reasonable sort of descent compared
with this one. Already the valley was echoing with the reports of
rifles; here and there I saw Toubous climbing the cliff-sides like goats
and stopping now and then to favour us from afar with noisy but harmless
shots, and vigorous volleys of bad language more harmless still.

There being no conceivable alternative to consider we had to go forward.
Covered by an advanced guard that returned the Toubous’ fire with a
fusillade of doubtful efficacy, and by a rear-guard that watched the
points from which the rebels could have rolled down tons of rock on our
heads, we crawled downwards in a circumspect advance along a path that
was no path—that clung to the face of a steep cliff, now plunging
sharply downwards in short zigzags, now hanging, a narrow ledge, above
the abyss towards which great stones dislodged by our camels rolled
rumbling or leapt clattering down from tier to tier. The camels were
frightened; they had to be led forward one by one, and could only be got
round corners with many stripes and voluble cursing. A little group of
men went ahead of them, thrusting aside the most awkward blocks, and,
where the natural steps in the rock were too steep, laying flat stones
at the foot so as to break them in two. The descent was so toilsome and
so slow that at sunset we were only halfway down. I had to call a halt,
profiting by a little rocky spur that afforded us a narrow rugged
platform where we found just room enough to make our camels kneel and to
install our bivouac. The firing had almost ceased: our advanced guard
came in soon afterwards after forcing the rebels to abandon their
villages, the conical roofs of which could be seen shining in the
moonlight more that 400 feet below. Still further down, below the palms,
ran an invisible stream, forming a monotonous waterfall that we heard
murmur in the neighbouring rocks.

[Illustration: A WATER-HOLE IN TIBESTI]

[Illustration: FIRST BUTTRESSES OF THE MASSIF OF TIBESTI]

Above our heads little patrols, relieved from hour to hour, kept watch
on the upper slopes from which the Toubous might have sent undesirable
avalanches rolling into our camp. The narrow band of sky that we could
see was filled with shining stars, by which I could make the
observations needed for calculating the point where we had stopped. The
night passed, calm and silent, and next morning, after an hour and a
half of fresh efforts, we were able to take up our quarters quietly on
the banks of the stream.

After which the excellent Mohammed, having received the promised reward,
took leave of us to return to his palm grove at Yountiou. But his
prudence led him to take quite another route, accessible only to men and
goats. All the luggage he carried was a little skin bottle half full of
water hanging from his right shoulder, together with a tiny bag
containing a few handfuls of dates and about a pound of millet flour. On
his left shoulder, swinging triumphantly from the two ends of his staff,
were two fine large-sized biscuit tins that glittered in the sun and
resounded like beaten gongs whenever they knocked against the corner of
a rock.

Toubous in small numbers still showed themselves on the cliff-sides, but
did not wait for the patrols I sent to parley with them. After a few
hours spent in watering the camels and in filling our barrels and skin
bottles, we resumed our route towards Miski. The little river of Modra
ran hardly more than a mile further down the valley, and the dry bed of
the torrent, at first littered with boulders, soon turned into a fine
winding road of sand from 200 to 300 yards wide. Twenty miles further on
we had to leave the river-bed and plunge into a chaos of little ridges
of schist, intersected by narrow valley-ways leading into valleys that
came down from neighbouring high mountains of an altitude exceeding 9000
feet: our camels had much trouble in making headway among sharp edges of
slaty rock upturned almost vertically. They zigzagged from pass to pass,
climbing steep slopes, dropping into rocky ravines, beyond which fresh
ridges separated by fresh ravines rose in endless succession. At last on
the 21st, very early in the morning, we came out into the wide flat
valley of Miski, where we made a brief halt to allow the stragglers to
come in. All our camels were there except one, and I may say that I felt
much satisfaction at having succeeded in bringing them back to the
starting-point after this toilsome flying expedition of more than 300
miles, carried out in seventeen days in the unknown and exceptionally
difficult mountain region of which I have tried to give you as closely
exact a description as I can.

For another 15 miles we pursued our way in the great valley of Miski, of
an average width of 4 to 5 miles, finding it pleasant to look once more
on the well-known landscape of peaks, domes, and cliffs of the Tarso
Koussi. The clearness of the air was such that all these mountains
seemed to be within walking distance, and that in this vast bare basin
where not a breath of air stirred and where the sun blazed his hottest,
we had the impression of marching without making any progress, so
unchanging did the perspective remain.

Towards 10 o’clock we found the first siwak bushes with their
characteristic peppery smell, and clumps of hamal, or bitter melon, with
their dried-up fruits; then, a little further on, a few stunted and
scattered talhas, a sort of acacia. At noon I got back at last to the
bivouac where my secretary was waiting for me. For five days, since the
departure for Borkou of Lieut. Fouché’s detachment, he had been left
alone with seven soldiers and seven camel-drivers to guard the supplies
and the reserve camels. And when I asked him whether the Toubous had not
worried him during that spell of isolation, he showed me his zeriba,
well organized for defence, with cartridge-boxes ready opened, and
replied sadly, “No such luck.”

To console him for his long inactivity I put him in charge of a patrol
sent against Youdou, a palm plantation still held by rebels, and of
which the site was not known; but he had not the good fortune of coming
to grips with them, for the alarm was given by their sentries, and they
drew off northwards into a rocky country where we should have had much
difficulty and lost a great deal of time in pursuing them. None the
less, this rush of 80 miles in less than forty hours across the awkward
country of the Tarso Koussi foothills achieved its purpose of forcing
the rebels to withdraw and fixing the site of Youdou with the desired
precision.

_Western Tibesti._—Thus the most important part of my geographical and
military programme in the Tibesti was carried to an end; at no point had
the Toubous offered a serious resistance to our march, in spite of the
magnificent defensive positions their country afforded them. The most
unruly among them had fled away to the north-east, more anxious to get
to a safe distance than to carry out their aggressive schemes against
our convoys of supplies; the rest, beaten off at every encounter, had
let us explore their wild valleys without subjecting us to any
surprises, whether in the shape of ambuscades or of the capture of
camels in grazing-time. Lastly, the general physiognomy of the Tibestian
massif was revealed with sufficient clearness by my various
observations, and its real position determined with all desirable
precision. It only remained, before returning to Borkou, to explore the
valleys of the western slope, and try to form a junction with the camel
corps of Zouar.

I accordingly set out for Tottous, an important water point 70 miles
further west, in the Wadi Domar where it comes out of the last foothills
of the Tibesti. The distance was covered in four days with little
trouble by following the lower valley of the Wad Miski, of which I was
thus enabled to cross in succession all the tributaries on the right
bank, till then unknown. The officer in command of the Zouar camel
corps, having been informed after my visit to Bardai that I was desirous
of seeing him, came to meet me, and we reached Tottous on the same day.
He was accompanied by the chief of the Tomagras, the noblest tribe among
the Têda-tous, the aged Guetty, who had made his submission to the
French authorities a few months earlier. Guetty was a handsome old man
with a white beard and a skin less dark than usual. He was tall and
regular featured, but his keen sly face inspired me with no great
confidence; he was suspected of double-dealing, and of supplying the
rebels with fuller information about our movements than us about theirs.
During two days we had long conversations about the restitution to their
families of the women and children that his fellow-tribesmen had carried
off in 1913 in the course of a razzia on an Arab tribe of Kanem; but the
old rascal either could not or would not fall in with my wishes,
declaring truly or falsely that the luckless captives had been sold as
slaves and sent away for the most part to the Senoussists of Cyrenaica.

_The Return Journey to Borkou._—The exhaustion of my camels had reached
such a point that I had to stay five days in the grazing-grounds of
Tottous. I profited by the delay to explore the course of the Wadi Domar
for about a score of miles in company of the Zouar camel corps, who were
going back to their station. My food supplies, which had not been
renewed for two months, were coming to an end, and I could not further
prolong my excursions in the valleys of Tibesti. Besides, the greater
part of the rebels had concentrated in the region of Abo, at the north-
western end of the massif, twelve whole days’ march away from Tottous.

Starting on November 4 for Faya, by a route hitherto unreconnoitred, we
covered 120 miles of desert in six days before reaching the oasis of
Kirdimi, near Ain Galakka, by the last and utmost effort our camels were
capable of. On November 12 at nightfall I found myself back in my post
of Faya, whose stout clay huts seemed to me for a whole week afterwards,
if not absolutely the last word, at least the last word but one of
comfort and civilization in the heart of the Sahara.


=8. Military Operations in 1916-1917.=


This exploration of Tibesti marked the end of the long journeys that had
been indispensable to the acquisition of a general knowledge of the vast
desert regions placed under my authority. The calculation of my numerous
observations, the making of general maps, the setting in order of my
notes of travel, and the writing of reports to be sent to the Government
occupied all my leisure in 1916. There was not much of it, by the way,
for distant effects of the world-war were already beginning to be felt
in Africa. The Grand Senoussi, Ahmed Sherif, was lending a more and more
willing ear to the suggestions of Nouri Bey’s Turco-German mission, and
sending one emissary after another to preach revolt to the different
sultans responsible to the French and British authorities; his
exhortations were particularly well received in Dar Four and in the
south of Wadai, where the English Colonel Kelly and the French Colonel
Hilaire had to do some serious fighting before they could restore order.

In the desert country I had charge of, the unrest had become almost
general among the nomads, and my camel-corp patrols had hard work to
maintain the regularity of our communications: there were rumours of a
great expedition of Germans, Turks, and Senoussists, with cannon,
machine-guns, and five thousand fighting troops, which was said to be
forming at Koufra to cross the Libyan desert and drive the French from
Borkou, Tibesti, and Ennedi. We made superb defensive preparations, but
no expeditionary force from Koufra ever came; what did come to reinforce
the rebels were brigands and highway robbers who made the roads unsafe,
and whom we had to pursue in all directions more or less. Among the most
remarkable of the expeditions of this period two deserve special
mention: they were led by Adjutant Amboroko, an old black non-
commissioned officer whose energy, courage, and high spirit won
universal admiration.

Having received orders to go in pursuit of a strong party of Toubous
commanded by Mohammed Erbeimi, a particularly dangerous leader of
raiders who had just made a successful foray in British territory, he
began by covering 130 miles in three days. Then for four days he
patrolled the neighbourhood of Tekro without being able to find any
trace of his enemy. He learnt, however, that Mohammed Erbeimi was
encamped 130 miles further east, and again covering that distance in
three days, he reached the well of Bini Erdi only to find that the band
had decamped two days earlier, following in the opposite direction a
route nearly parallel to that by which he had come. Allowing his
detachment just time enough to water their camels and fill their skin-
bottles, he set out again at once, following the tracks of the raiders
and forcing the pace! The pursuit, hotter and hotter as the trail of the
rebels grew fresher, lasted fifty-one hours, two of which only were
allowed for rest, and he came into contact with the rebels at dead of
night. Unluckily, the barking of their dogs gave the alarm to the enemy
at the last moment. Our men leapt down from their camels and made a
sharp and sudden attack on the Toubous, who had not time to organize
their defence and fled headlong into the neighbouring rocks, leaving on
the ground four killed, all their camels, and the prisoners they had
taken in Dar Four.

Some time afterwards Mohammed Erbeimi made an attempt to get his
revenge. Reinforced by a contingent of Senoussists from Koufra, he
organized a flying column a hundred rifles strong and flung it by a
rapid march on our lines of communication between Borkou and Wadai,
where our last supplies of the year were on their way. Thanks to the
treachery of a Nakazza chief, he was able at daybreak to surprise one of
our convoys on the march. Though the escort counted only fifteen rifles
under a black sergeant, our black troops offered a bold front; but,
overpowered by numbers and deserted by the camel-drivers, all they could
do was to save their honour and fall in their tracks. That took place
150 miles south of Faya, in the desert of Mortcha. Now, it so happened
that Adjutant Amboroko, with a force of seventy-five rifles, had been
patrolling for two days in that same desert, on the look-out for
Mohammed Erbeimi’s raiding party, my spies having notified me, albeit
rather late, of its appearance on the scene. He was not able to get on
its tracks till sixteen hours after the wiping-out of the convoy escort,
when he set off at once in pursuit. Two hours later he came upon it by
surprise and routed it in a few minutes by a vigorous bayonet-charge;
the enemy, taken completely off his guard, abandoned his booty and a
certain number of dead, and made off hastily eastwards. Amboroko, an old
hand at desert fighting, thereupon judged it expedient to let the
Toubous get a few miles’ start, and so lead them to think that he held
himself satisfied by the recapture of our supplies of cereals and of our
camels, and was going to take back the camels at once to Faya. He
calculated that as soon as the first spell of panic was over the rebels
would get together to discuss the advisability of a counter-attack. His
forecast turned out correct. Resuming the pursuit under cover of night,
he again came in sight of the raiding-party towards three in the
morning, in regular order once more, and holding a palaver round the
bivouac fires. Closing in to short range he poured in a rapid fire,
immediately followed by a bayonet-charge that laid out a dozen Toubous,
while the rest in utter panic fled at top speed in all directions, some
on foot, others hanging on to the tails of their camels that made off at
full gallop without leaving time for their riders to get astride. The
hunt went on till noon, and supplied us with a few prisoners who gave
the most precise details of the treachery of the Nakazza chief; after
which Amboroko retraced his steps to take in charge the convoy of
supplies and bring it into Faya. But he was of opinion that our brave
soldiers fallen the day before were not sufficiently avenged, and
providing himself with fresh camels he set out at once in pursuit,
seeking all across the desert the tracks of those who had escaped his
two counter-attacks. Going further and further afield, he found himself
finally 300 miles to the eastward among the rocks of Erdi, where the
families of Mohammed Erbeimi’s Toubous were in hiding, and engaged in
two fights with them which cost the rebels some thirty killed; but the
old chief unluckily succeeded once more in bringing his head safely out
of the business.

Early in 1917 the revolt might be considered as crushed. The tribes had
begun to discuss terms of submission, all except Mohammed Erbeimi’s
tribe, the remnant of which had taken refuge in the massif of Ouri 300
miles north-east of Faya, and was not in a condition to do any harm for
a certain time.


=9. Homeward Journey.=


Then I saw my interminable sojourn in the desert brought to an end by
the person of Captain Gauckler, an experienced commander of camel-corps,
who had seen most of his service in the African colonies, and was come
from the French front to replace me in Borkou. Thus my turn on the
Western Front was to come early enough to enable me to share in the
gigantic battle that could be foreseen, from the hour when Russia fell
out of the fight, as imminent and decisive. The French Government having
replied favourably to my request for permission to return to France by
way of Egypt, this return journey would allow me to effect the geodetic
and topographical liaison between Borkou and Dar Four—in other words, to
accomplish the last part of the geographical programme that toward the
end of the last century I had set myself to carry out.

_From Borkou to Wadai._—I left the oasis of Faya on 25 April 1917 in an
east-south-easterly direction, skirting the foot of the western spurs of
the high tablelands of Ennedi. In ten days I reached the post of Fada,
where Captain Châteauvieux presented to me the chiefs Gaëdas and
Mourdias, whom two long years of incessant struggles had constrained to
submit; we discussed and settled in concert the conditions on which the
“aman” should be granted them. After which, turning my back on the
picturesque rocks of Ennedi, I went on my way towards the south-west,
across the desert of Mortcha, to reach the wells of Oum Chalouba. These
wells, situated in the Wadi Hachim, belong to the Nakazzas, one of the
principal Toubou tribes of Borkou, who are masters, under our control,
of the oasis surrounding the post of Fada, but whose submission to our
authority did not prevent them from entertaining with our enemies
relations as cordial as they were clandestine, that gave us endless
trouble. The judgment-seat of the native court over which I presided was
heaped high with complaints and claims for damages against their chiefs,
Allatchi and Djimmi. Their low cunning and double-dealing exasperated
me; but since my return to Europe it has become evident to me that, like
many other reputable persons, they were simply engaged in politics.

[Illustration: The author’s routes between Tibesti and the Nile]

The wells of Oum Chalouba are very important, both because of their
position at the extreme southern limit of the Sahara and because they
never run dry. Accordingly, the caravans that go and come between Wadai
and the Mediterranean by Ounianga and Koufra all pass through this
station, where, it may be added, their sojourn is usually brief owing to
the high price of food.

It is 140 miles from Oum Chalouba to Abéché, the capital of Wadai, in a
general direction from north to south, across a region of great plains
intersected by valleys running from east to west in which a few wooded
galleries bear witness to the annual passage of ephemeral torrents that
come down from the granitic hills and tablelands of Zagawa and Tama. The
summer rains are not sufficient to permit the cultivation of native
cereals, but they produce extensive and abundant pasturage, where
Mahamid tribes graze fine herds of oxen and flocks of sheep and goats.

Two military posts ensure the policing and administration of the
country: Arada, the commissariat centre of a camel-corps section, and
Biltine, where a company of black troops is garrisoned. It is in the
neighbourhood of Biltine that the first villages of the sedentary tribes
are seen, the Mimis, then the Kodois. The millet fields, small at first
and far apart, increase in size and frequency as one gets further south;
but the harvests are still uncertain, for spells of drought are by no
means rare. The year 1913 was especially fatal; the grain dried up on
the stalk, and there was such a shortage when the crops were got in that
a terrible famine spread over the whole country during the first eight
months of 1914. Many inhabitants had to emigrate southwards, and those
who had not foresight enough to flee in time, chiefly old men and
children, died of hunger in the villages they had not been willing to
leave. The number of the inhabitants of Wadai who perished thus is
estimated at more than half, some say even at more than three-quarters.
The population of Wadai, put by Nachtigal at more than two millions in
1872, had fallen to 300,000 when I went that way.

_Abéché._—At sunrise on 31 May 1917 I came in sight of Abéché, the
famous capital of the sultans who had made of Wadai one of the most
powerful Soudanese kingdoms of the nineteenth century. Seen from a
distance, it looks like a little cluster, grey and huddled, of low
houses, overtopped by a few towers with pointed roofs, and had nothing
of the handsome appearance that had impressed Nachtigal nearly fifty
years before. It was now no more than a small town of three or four
thousand people, and more than half ruined. It is true that ruins are
accumulated with extreme rapidity in Central Africa, where the finest
houses are only ill-built huts of clay kneaded and baked in the sun, and
quickly falling into dilapidation every rainy season. The plain
surrounding the town looks no better, being scantily covered with dry
grasses and little green clumps of “m’keit” which our camels browsed on
with lively satisfaction. The shrub-tribe was almost exclusively
represented by little “oshar,” whose puffy-looking fruits enclose a
silky down like “kapok”; as for the mimosa family, so abundant in the
neighbouring bush, it had well-nigh disappeared, as often happens near
the negro habitations through the wasteful use made of it as firewood.

Abéché has retained few traces of its ancient splendour. The former
palace of the sultans, kept till that time as a specimen of the
architecture of Wadai, had just been pulled down by order of the new
governor of the province. Round about it was strewn a mass of _débris_,
on which were slowly rising new buildings of a highly military style.
Only the business quarter of Am Sogou and the market-place had kept a
busy and animated aspect. Men, women, and merry black small-fry bustled
noisily to and fro, inextricably mixed up with asses, camels, dogs, and
horses. Numerous Tripolitan merchants, white-faced, wearing red fezzes
and long flowing embroidered robes, stalked gravely back and forth,
making it evident by their decorous elegance and the satisfaction
visible on their faces that, in spite of the suppression of the slave-
traffic, business remained active and prosperous.

_From Wadai to Dar Four._—I was forced, much against my will, to stay
ten long days at Abéché before continuing my journey. The road usually
followed from Abéché to El Fasher passes through Dar Massalit to
Kebkebia, along the valleys of Wadi Kadja and Wadi Barré; it is about
220 miles long and very easy, except from August to October or November,
when the summer rains fill the rivers and temporary marshes, very
numerous in this region. But since that route had been reconnoitred
formerly by Nachtigal, and very recently by Colonel Hilaire, the idea
had occurred to me of studying a more northerly route unknown throughout
two-thirds of its length, and passing through Dar Tama, Dar Guimer, and
northern Dar Four.

_Dar Tama._—This project having obtained the approbation of the
Government, I was able to leave Abéché on June 9, and plunged into a
very broken granitic region, where the rise and fall was inconsiderable,
but which was intersected by numerous wooded valleys where marching was
no very easy matter, especially at night. But I had the advantage of
passing through an inhabited tract where water was frequently to be
found, a consideration of importance for the feeding of a little group
of Zagawa women and children whom I was taking back to Dar Four after a
long and eventful sojourn in the wilderness. Captured the year before by
the same Toubou raiders whom we had to go in pursuit of, they had been
delivered by our camel-corps, and were going back to their families
under the protection of my escort. We went from village to village,
forced to change guides at every halt, and to stay long enough to listen
to the compliments with which the notabilities bade us welcome. In
addition to the compliments, they brought us water, millet, eggs, a
little milk, and sometimes a sheep or a goat. Around the villages there
were many fields of millet and sorgho, and it was not unusual to meet
with gardens, in which cotton, tobacco, and spices were the most
frequent products.

In this way we reached the plateaux of Dar Tama, averaging from 2500 to
3000 feet in altitude, where on the gently undulating surface the going
was pleasanter than on the rough slopes of the foothills leading up to
the tableland. A few lonely eminences rose here and there, the loftiest
of which, the peak of Niéré, visible for 30 miles around, reaches a
height of 4500 feet. For the first time in more than four years I saw
once again the thick-leaved tamarind trees, whose beautiful green is a
rest to the eyes, and in whose shade the traveller is glad to halt
during the hottest hours.

On June 13, after a long stage during which our successive guides had
led us in needless zigzags, we arrived at the foot of Mount Niéré, where
there is a village called Nannaoua. Here we camped in the deep shade of
two or three white acacias, less than 500 yards from the spot where in
1909 one of the brilliant contemporary explorers of Central Africa, the
regretted English Lieutenant Boyd Alexander, was assassinated. My tent
had hardly been pitched an hour when a messenger came to announce the
visit of the Sultan of Tama, who desired to present his compliments and
bid me welcome. This mark of courteous deference was all the pleasanter
from the fact that on leaving Abéché I had been put on my guard against
a possible want of cordiality during my passage through Tama. I
immediately had a mat of palm-fibre, in default of carpets, laid down at
the entrance to my tent, and advanced to meet the sultan, a handsome,
white-bearded old man with a black skin and kindly intelligent eyes; he
was dressed in the flowing robe in use throughout Central Africa, but
made of fine linen richly embroidered. He wore brown boots made in
Europe, and his careful attention to his personal appearance went the
length of socks. On his head was a red fez, round which ran a narrow
twist of white muslin, and he walked with slow and stately steps, his
left hand resting on the shoulder of one of his servants.

Our interview lasted upwards of half an hour, and was extremely cordial;
the sultan urged me to break up my camp the same afternoon in order to
go and sleep in his capital of Niéré, where he had had huts made ready
for us; but in reply I alleged the exhaustion of our camels, which were
in urgent need of grazing till evening. Besides, I had to make a stellar
observation at that particular spot in order to calculate exactly the
position and altitude of the mountain of Niéré, the most remarkable
point, geographically speaking, of the whole region. Soon afterwards I
saw the sultan was waiting for me to rise and take leave; I helped him
up and accompanied him a few steps from my tent. His servants and
dependents were waiting outside for him in the ritual attitude of the
courtiers of the ancient sultans of Central Africa, that is to say,
prostrated to the ground, their knees and elbows resting on the earth,
and their hind-quarters level with their head.

He called the chief of the village of Nannaoua to give him instructions
with a view to our comfort. The latter got up and came to listen to his
suzerain’s commands, kneeling before him with clasped hands, downcast
eyes, and devoutly attentive face. When the sultan ceased speaking, the
village chief clapped his hands several times and got up to go at once
and transmit to his subjects the orders he had just received.

Early next morning I reached the camp that had been prepared for me in
the shade of some “kournas” near the well, but the huts were so low
roofed and uncomfortable that I preferred to pitch my tent, severely
damaged as it was by four years’ wear and tear. I had to stay two days
at Niéré to wait for the arrival of four camels intended to replace the
pack-carrying oxen I had to send back to Abéché.

The capital of Tama is only a small village covering about 35 acres,
where the straw huts are set rather far apart; the inhabitants, by no
means numerous, consist almost exclusively of the families and servants
of the dignitaries immediately surrounding the sultan. Other villages
are scattered about the neighbourhood, usually lying at the foot of
isolated rocks of no great height, but of very characteristic
geometrical shapes, rising out of the uniform tableland like natural
landmarks destined to rejoice the hearts of a triangulation brigade.

In our camp an unpleasant surprise awaited us: hardly had we settled
down when we saw coming down from the kournas whole battalions of
caterpillars that made straight towards us and obstinately set about
climbing all over our packing-cases, chairs, clothes, and persons in
quest of a quiet and shady corner where they could comfortably instal
their cocoons and go to sleep in the hope of a happy metamorphosis. We
hunted them, killed them, but to no purpose, for still they came. And
these caterpillars, sociable to a fault, are tormentors of the worst
type: wherever they go they leave behind them invisible hairs that burn
like nettles. Next morning we were all scratching furiously, unable to
find even momentary relief except in applications of very hot water. My
trunk of books was infested, and, above all, that which contained my
linen; so also were my bedclothes. All the washing, swilling, and
beating I could do failed to rid my clothes entirely of this pest, and I
had to endure its tortures for long as best I might. It was only when I
got to Khartoum and could get fresh clothes and throw away my up-country
garments, if such they could be called, that I really found a little
peace. In the evening a thick cloud of locusts came and settled on the
region; in a few minutes the trees were covered with them, and their
green changed to the pink hue of these voracious insects’ bodies.

The sultan came repeatedly to see me. He was fond of talking and telling
me his history and that of Tama during the preceding decade; he also
told me the story of the murder of Boyd Alexander as it was related to
him not many days after the tragic event by his predecessor the Sultan
Othman and the chief Adem Rouyal, commander of the Forian force sent
from Dar Four by the Sultan Ali Dinar to drive the French out of
Wadai.[2] The sultan was above all interested in the Franco-Anglo-German
war; he asked question after question, and I had a great deal of trouble
in giving him a hazy idea of the formidable masses of war material,
supplies, cannon, rifles, and the unheard-of numbers of men brought into
action on both sides.

Thanks to his good offices, I was able to get the supplies I was in
daily need of for my detachment; and in these days of excessively dear
living it will not perhaps be without interest to give a summary list,
at this point, of the prices that were asked me:

                            _s._   _d._

  A small yearling ox        12      0

  200 lbs. of millet flour    4      0

  An average-sized sheep      2      6

  Chickens                    0      6½

  One pound of butter         0      3

   „    „      onions         0      3

  A quart of milk             0      1

Had we been wise enough to have rational ideas about railways in Africa,
and to have them in time, what a help the Black Continent would be to us
now! I trust the ordeal we are going through to-day may induce France
and Great Britain, the two great guardians of the Black population, to
join in intimate union in order to labour together at the great work of
opening up Africa and turning its resources to account—a work that must
be undertaken at once! But this is a vast question, and one that must be
treated separately; so I beg to be excused for this digression.

In the afternoon of the 10th, having succeeded in hiring the necessary
five camels, two of them enormous, and the other three of the tiniest, I
took leave of Sultan Hassan to go on with my journey towards Guimer.
Four days later I arrived at Koulbouss, the temporary residence of the
Sultan of Guimer.

_Dar Guimer._—The welcome I received was of the chilliest. Two hundred
yards from the village a son of the Sultan Idriss came all alone to meet
me, and announced that his father had started a few days earlier for El
Fasher; and then, skirting the village, he led me down the valley to a
spot where a dilapidated hut, not far from a well and at the entrance of
what had once been a piece of enclosed land, was offered me in which to
take up my quarters. I had great difficulty in obtaining a few
provisions, and two days were spent in animated discussions before I
could get a guide and four hired camels to replace those lent me in
Tama. Even so I only got them thanks to the good offices of a Zagawa
chief who had come to greet me on my passage because he had on a former
occasion found his relations with the French authorities of Wadai turn
out greatly to his advantage. But I could not get the sort of current
information about the country and its inhabitants usually given to
travellers by the natives. However, when I showed my surprise at the
residence of the Sultan of Guimer at Koulbouss, which is in Tama
territory, the son of Sultan Idriss condescended to explain that that
installation was only temporary, having been authorized towards 1910 by
Sultan Hassan of Tama by reason of the raids the Sultan of Guimer had
had to undergo at the hands of the Forian bands of Ali Dinar. His return
to his own capital was to take place shortly, the occupation of El
Fasher by the Anglo-Egyptian troops having put an end to these
incursions.

I left Koulbouss on 22 June early in the morning, with no great
confidence in the success of my enterprise, for the guide assigned to me
did not seem any too satisfied at the idea of taking me to Kebkebia,
from which we were separated by a stretch of almost completely
uninhabited country nearly 120 miles across, and in which the water-
points were few and quite possibly dried up. Very luckily, everything
went as well as could be imagined; I saw no trace of the Senoussist
raid, so called, which local rumour credited for some time with having
caught me by surprise, taken me prisoner, and carried me off as a
hostage to Koufra. A few wells were found, very nearly dry, but we were
careful in husbanding our supply of water. We saw very few inhabitants
and met no caravan. What worried me most, and most unexpectedly, was the
grazing question, for the country, though covered with scrub, was so
dried up that our camels hardly ever got a satisfying feed and grew most
disquietingly thin.

Dar Guimer is hardly more than a gently undulating plain of somewhat
uniform appearance, 100 miles across from east to west, and 20 from
north to south. The inhabitants, few in number, if I may accept the
accounts given me, seem less inclined to tillage than to cattle-raising.
The soil is usually clayey, very marshy from the end of July to
December, but almost completely waterless from April to July. The
valleys come down fanwise from the tablelands of Tama on the west, of
Zagawa on the north, and northern Dar Four on the east. They meet on a
level with the Djebel Kichkich (Hadjer Moull) to form the Wadi Kadja,
one of the parent branches of the Bahr-Salamat, which is one of the most
important valleys on the right bank of the Shari, the main affluent of
the Chad.

During the morning of June 25 we reached the southern limit of Dar
Guimer at the wells of Taziriba; only 3 yards deep and flowing
abundantly at all seasons, they were situated in a valley where there
are no trees of any size, but an abundant growth of scrub. The wells,
usually silted up, had been dug out afresh a few days previously, on the
occasion of the Sultan Idriss’ visit to Dar Four. Having thus been able
to water our camels and renew our own supply, we left the territory of
Guimer the same evening, to go and sleep half a score of miles further
on.

_Between Guimer and Dar Four._—It is interesting to notice that the
tribes whose territories separate Wadai from Dar Four (Massalit, Tama,
and Guimer) have always left a wide belt of uninhabited country between
themselves and Dar Four. At some points its width exceeds 100 miles,
while no similar solution of continuity exists between them and Wadai.
It should not be concluded, as is sometimes done, that these territories
are desert-like in character, for they are watered every year by the
summer rains and covered with an abundant vegetation, for the most part
thorny and stunted, it is true. These lands are not incapable even of
settled habitation, for it would suffice to bore a few wells, around
each of which men could take up their quarters in permanence, with
fields of grain and cotton and pasturage for cattle. Such unpeopled
regions are common in Central Africa, and each of them constitutes a
neutral zone, a sort of “no man’s land” that separates the territories
of two hostile tribes.

It was across a belt of this kind that our route now lay, a belt about
70 miles wide between Safé, the last village of Guimer, and Rémélé, the
first of Dar Four. On June 26 a long morning march brought us to the
wells of Délébé, situated at the crossing of an important route chiefly
used by native traffickers on their way to barter the grain of Massalit
for the salt of Dar Four at the market of Diellé, some 20 miles north of
Kebkebia. The site was pleasant and covered for a space of several miles
in length and 200 or 300 yards in breadth with fine harazes and kournas,
which gave us the illusion of a great shady park at home; but the lack
of water in the well and the way our store of eatables was running short
did not allow us to yield to the temptation of resting there a day.

We had to start again in the afternoon and march till dark in order to
reach, early next morning, the wells of Chibéké, whose immediate
neighbourhood, so our guide told us, was infested by lions; but we had
not the pleasure of seeing any. A further stage of a score of miles at
last permitted us to get out of the uninhabited region and reach the
Wadi Gueddara, at the point where it comes out of the mountains that
mark the watershed between the basins of the Chad and the Nile.

_Western Dar Four._—These mountains seemed to be much more important
than the maps and descriptions of former travellers had led me to
suppose. They formed a long and rather confused chain, running
approximately from north to south; and their chief summit, mount
Dourboullé, some 30 miles to the east, rose to more than 7000 feet above
sea-level.

I spent June 28 at the village of Rémélé, where I received a very kind
letter of welcome from Lieut.-Colonel Savile Pasha, governor of the
province, who put at my disposal an escort of six soldiers of the native
police. I wanted to ascertain the exact position of this village, but
rain fell at intervals throughout the evening and night and prevented me
from observing the indispensable stars. If I was vexed, the natives were
delighted, for the damp soil would enable them to sow seed for the first
time that year. Next day I had only a dozen miles to cover in order to
arrive at the advanced post of Kebkebia, the furthest west of the
military posts in Dar Four, and during that short march I enjoyed the
happy and restful feeling of the sailor who, after a long voyage, sees
shining on the horizon, across the calm of the spent waters, the
cheerful harbour lights. We advanced along the western foot of the
chain, gradually nearing it, and noticing that it seemed to connect with
the massif of Djebel Marra, of which from time to time I could see for a
moment the highest peak, more than 50 miles to the south-south-east. We
went along through a smiling and prosperous-looking country, already
covered with springing grass, dotted with green trees, and broken here
and there by rocky heights that did not rise higher than 400 feet.

The natives, scattered about their fields, watched our caravan go by
without unfriendliness or sign of misgiving, and then betook themselves
again to their work with the serene dignity of men who till the soil.
Both in the explicit picture it makes and in suggestion, their husbandry
is very different from ours. The noble gesture familiar in our western
fields, of the sower sowing his seed broadcast along the furrows, is
lacking on African plains. The man I was watching walked straight on,
holding in both hands a hoe bent into a right angle; at every second
step, without stopping or even stooping, he made with it a tiny hole,
hardly more than a scratch in the tawny sand. He was followed by a
child, a boy clad in a simple sunbeam, carrying a calabash of millet,
and parsimoniously letting fall into each hole a few grains that he
summarily covered by turning a little earth over them with his bare
toes. Happy lands, where man is satisfied with hard, coarse grain, and
where the earth, in return for but small pains, breaks forth into
abundant harvest. Which of us shall judge between them, and say whether
it is better to be exacting in one’s wants, and with great labour to
attain to one’s desire, or to be content with little and find that, with
hardly an effort, that little may be had?

I was welcomed on my arrival at Kebkebia by the commander, a native
officer of the 13th Sudanese Battalion, Sub-Lieut. Saïd Effendi Adam,
accompanied by a sergeant of Engineers, Sergeant Gasterens, R.E., in
command of the wireless telegraphy post, and by the headman of the
village. Thanks to their good offices, comfortable shelters were found
for us, and I could procure all the food required for the use of my
party. The village is of small extent, poor and dreary in appearance. It
is said that the sultan Ali Dinar had the greater part of the
inhabitants deported a few years ago after confiscating their property,
to punish them for showing too much esteem for a certain marabout named
Faki Sini, regarded in the district as a worker of miracles. The one
that made the deepest impression on the natives, I was assured,
consisted in being able to change colour and volume whenever he liked,
and even make himself entirely invisible, which did not prevent him from
letting himself be surprised and made short work of by the myrmidons of
the sultan incensed at his growing prestige.

I had to stay four days in the neighbourhood of Kebkebia, the first part
of the time being spent in going back to Rémélé to make arrangements for
the return of my escort and hired camels to Abéché; I also hoped to make
the astronomical observations I had been unable to make on the night of
my arrival. But I had my labour for my pains. All four days the sky
remained almost constantly overcast and the rain fell in torrents, the
clouds came in great masses from the west-south-west, and, striking the
mountain chain at the foot of which lie Rémélé and Kebkebia, they
dissolved in rain that fell at frequent intervals, while on the other
side of the chain there fell only rare and insignificant showers.

It was only the last day that I could make the planetary observations
required for fixing the positions of Kebkebia, mount Dourboullé, and the
summit of the Djebel Marra; this last is notably higher than the 6000
feet above the sea attributed to it by the maps of Africa: my first
calculations allowed me to fix its altitude somewhere between 9000 and
9800 feet.

I left Kebkebia on July 2, starting in the afternoon in an easterly
direction, skirting the foot of mount Dourboullé on its southern side.
The track, cleared of scrub for a width of a dozen yards, lay along a
ground rocky indeed, but presenting no serious difficulties. We came
across no villages, though the country is inhabited. Here and there on
the hillsides one could see stone enclosures, in groups of twenty to
thirty, which till a short time previously had been villages whose
inhabitants had withdrawn higher up the mountain in order to escape, so
at least we were told, from the former sultan’s incessant and vexatious
requisitions. They were not themselves described to us as particularly
desirable, being inclined to banditism; but I can offer no evidence on
the question, for they did not trouble the march of my little caravan.

On July 4, for the third and last time, I crossed the line that
separates the waters of the Chad basin from that of the Mediterranean,
at the Kowra Pass, which is at an altitude of about 4000 feet; then,
coming down from spur to spur across the Djebel Kowra I reached the
Djebel Om, a very broken region, chaotic in appearance and covered with
scanty scrub, stunted, prickly, and almost leafless, where our exhausted
camels found but little sustenance. From place to place we crossed
recently worked deposits of salt. The salt is very much mixed with
earth, and the richest beds are indicated by the swollen, cracked, and
friable character of the soil. As in other salt-producing regions in
Central Africa, the salt-bearing earth is washed for a longer or shorter
time in washing and filtering baskets; then, when the saline solution
has become concentrated enough, it is heated in clay jars, on the inside
of which the salt crystallizes as the water evaporates. The product thus
obtained, though impure and grey-coloured, is pleasant to the taste, and
supplies a great part of the market in Dar Four and the neighbouring
countries.

In the afternoon of the 5th, leaving behind us the last salt-beds of Om
Bakour, we got clear away from the mountainous zone and made our way for
four days across the undulating plains that stretch eastwards beyond El
Fasher. The further I went the clearer grew the panorama of the chain I
had just crossed. Spur after spur, fantastically shaped, extended in
long succession to the north, while towards the west and the south the
summits of the Dourboullé and the Djebel Marra towered above the rest of
the mountains and stood out boldly against the sky, especially at dusk,
a moment at which the light was particularly favourable for the
observations required for determining their position and altitude. In
the plain of shifting sand, dotted here and there with isolated rocks of
huge size, real natural geodetic signals, the landscape stretched away
monotonously, almost without trees or even grass. The fertilizing rains
of the first few days of July not having reached further than the
djebels I had just crossed, the sowing had not begun, and the
inhabitants of the villages that succeeded one another at regular
intervals down the valleys I traversed were feeling a little uneasy.

At sunrise on July 9, after passing by the hamlet of Zaïdia, I came in
sight of the capital of Dar Four; it seemed to be a place of
considerable extent, and to consist of thatched huts grouped by distinct
quarters along the east side of a bare valley. In the uniform grey of
the city I hardly noticed more than one remarkable building, white, and
shaped like a tiara, and dominating the northern part of the town; and
towards the centre a clump of green trees, from which emerged a
construction of European style. The former was the Koubba of Zakaria
Zata, the tomb of the sultan Ali Dinar’s father; the latter was the
sultan’s old palace turned into the residence of the Governor of the
Province.

Beyond the town I could see low lines of hills, on the north the Djebel
Wana, and on the east the Djebel Fasher, at the foot of which a year
before the Forian army had been routed by the Anglo-Sudanese troops of
Colonel Kelly. To the south a sandy plain of a fine tawny colour
stretched away to the horizon, intersected by the long, dark green
ribbon of the Wadi El Ko, a sub-tributary through the Bahr el Ghazal of
the Nile. Westwards various djebels of greater or less importance stood
out in broken lines against the distant curtain of the great chain of
western Dar Four. A few moments later I was joined by a group of
horsemen: it was His Excellency the Governor of Dar Four, Lieut.-Colonel
R. V. Savile Pasha, who bade me welcome and took me to the Residency,
where the most cordial hospitality awaited me.

_El Fasher._—On the evening of my arrival I installed as usual the
prismatic astrolabe and the box of chronometers for my daily
astronomical observation, and when it was finished I was filled with a
deep and intimate joy: after eighteen years of persistent effort I had
at last reached the geographical goal that I had set myself to attain in
Central Africa. That last observation, made in the palace yard of El
Fasher, set the seal, once for all, on the liaison of the geodetic
systems of the basins of the Niger, the Chad, and the Nile, for the
longitude of El Fasher had just been determined by the officers of the
Sudan Survey Department by the aid of the telegraph line recently
established between Khartoum and El Fasher. I had to stay twelve days in
this town in order to carry out, in conference with the Governor of Dar
Four, a mission with which I had been entrusted by the Governor of the
Territory of the Chad. This mission concerned the policing of the
borderland of the two Governments, and the settlement of the claims
arising out of depredations committed by the rebel tribes of Ennedi.
After we had come to a complete understanding I drew up, in
collaboration with Mr. A. C. Pilkington, a provisional map, on a scale
of 1/1,000,000, of the part of the Franco-Anglo-Egyptian borders
affected by our agreement. During all this time, need I say that I was
the object of the utmost kindness and attention on the part of the
Governor and the British officers who surrounded him. Their friendly
reception of me remains one of my most treasured recollections of this
journey.

El Fasher seemed to be a town of from fifteen to twenty thousand
inhabitants, and one of the finest-looking native cities I have seen in
Central Africa; it is built on sand-dunes surrounding a temporary lake
that dries up a few weeks after the end of the rainy season, and in
which in the dry season the natives dig hundreds of wells, the water of
which is then sold at an average price varying between a halfpenny and a
penny a gallon. The town stands on two sides of the lake, somewhat in
the shape of a circumflex accent, open to the southward, and whose apex
is marked, roughly speaking, by the Koubba of Zakaria; the eastern side
of this angle is more particularly occupied by traders and natives,
while the governor’s palace and the greater part of the official
buildings are on the western side. Between the business town and the
administrative town lies a great square, a sort of Champ de Mars where
festivals, parades, and reviews take place, and where once a week the
band of the battalion gives a concert.

What struck me most in this town is its well-kept and green appearance;
the streets are wide, the houses in good repair and surrounded with
trees (mostly serrahs). There are none of the hovels, the broken-down
walls, the heaps of refuse so often found in Sudanese cities, except
perhaps on the south side, where, at the time of my passing through the
town, a group of Fellatas had set up a camp of dirty little straw huts
in which men, women, children, and cattle sprawled in an indiscriminate
heap.

The sultan Ali Dinar, who had spent part of his youth in the valley of
the Nile with the Khalif of the Mahdists, had acquired there a taste for
green trees, fine houses, and broad avenues. His palace had been
carefully constructed. The principal building, a rectangular white house
two stories high, surmounted by a terrace, opened northwards on to a
garden planted with palms and lemon-trees. The rooms were large and
comfortable, and from the second storey windows the Sultan could see not
only the whole of his palace and his capital, but also a vast panorama
over the surrounding plain, the valley of the Wadi El Ko, the mountains
of Kebkebia, and even the Djebel Marra, whose imposing mass can be seen
when the sky is very clear, more than 70 miles to the south-west. Other
houses, less sumptuous, but more original because local in style,
equally attract one’s notice in the interior of this palace, in which
one loses one’s self in a labyrinth of walls, courtyards, and
outbuildings. These houses are large round huts with simple clay walls,
but whose roofs, admirably thatched, are often connected by long wide
verandahs. These were the apartments of the princesses, light, roomy,
and comfortable. Ali Dinar’s æsthetic preoccupations have been rare
among Sudanese monarchs, but it must be admitted that in order to
embellish his palace and his capital he had all but ruined his kingdom,
reducing half the population to a sort of semi-slavery, filling his
harem with concubines, distributing his subjects’ cattle among his
favourites and the Arab merchants who brought him precious merchandise
and weapons and ammunition sent by the Senoussists. He dreamed of
extending his empire, and lent a too ready ear to the preachers of the
Holy War, who, under the ægis of the Grand Senoussi and the Grand Turk,
dreamed of driving French and British out of Africa. It was with him as
with so many other despots: he fell through pride. Had he shown more
wisdom and diplomacy he might well have been reigning still in Dar Four.

There would be many more things to say about El Fasher, but I have
already dallied too long over the pleasant memories left me by my
sojourn in that town. I beg to be excused inasmuch as, though I was
still 1700 miles from Cairo, I considered myself as having reached the
end of my journey. There only remained three weeks’ march with camels
that would bring me to the railway terminus at El Obeid across an
inhabited country not merely known but already organized; I must leave
the pleasure of describing it to one or another of the British officers
who have conquered and pacified it, and who know it better than I, who
passed through it too quickly to be able to study it as it deserves.

_From El Fasher to Cairo._—I left El Fasher in the evening of 21 July
1917, passing through Um Gedada and Dam Gamad to El Nahud, where I
arrived on August 4. I left again on the 6th, deeply touched by the
hearty welcome of the District Inspector, Major J. G. N. Bardwell. On
August 13, towards four in the afternoon, as I came within sight of El
Obeid, I heard for the first time in five years the whistle of a
locomotive, and its strident note was sweeter to my ears than the most
classical music, for it told me that I had at last reached the gate of
civilization; and the same evening, at dinner with His Excellency the
Governor of Kordofan, Mr. J. W. Sagar, the sight of the graceful and
charmingly dressed ladies who were present confirmed that delightful
impression.

The next day was a very busy one, for I had to discharge my native
escort, pay my camel-drivers, put in order, mend, and bring to the train
my numerous cases of instruments, collections, and documents, in order
to take on the Wednesday the bi-weekly train. I was only able to do so
thanks to the unwearied kindness of the Governor and of the Garrison
Commander, Major T. S. Vandeleur, D.S.O.

On August 15, at 7 o’clock in the morning, I took the train for
Khartoum. The faithful blacks who had come with me all the way from
Borkou were filled with gaping wonder at the sight of the long heavy
string of carriages moving by itself. His Excellency the Governor and
the Garrison Commander had come to the station to wish me a happy end to
my travels, and to see that I had everything I wanted. Let me be allowed
here to express once more my lively gratitude!

Then followed two long days in the train across the wide plains of
Kordofan, the crossing of the White Nile by a monumental bridge, then
the arrival on the Blue Nile at Sennar, where passengers were waiting
who had come from the Upper Nile; then Wad Medina in the afternoon, and
finally, in the middle of the night, Khartoum.

I stayed a week in Khartoum, where I was the guest of the Civil
Secretary, Feilden Pasha, and Dr. P. S. Crispin, Director of the Medical
Service. It was an enchanting week that I spent in that pearl of the
Sudan, which is already visited by many a tourist, so great was the
consideration shown me by my hosts and by the high officials and
officers of the capital.

I left Khartoum on August 24, arrived in Cairo in the morning of the
28th, and on the 30th had the honour of being presented at Alexandria by
the French Diplomatic Agent to His Excellency the British High
Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Reginald Wingate.

As there was no boat ready to start for France, I was able to satisfy my
impatience to see an up-to-date fighting front by a visit to the British
front lines opposite the Turkish trenches which at that time defended
Gaza. Then, returning to Alexandria, I embarked for Malta. From there I
reached Syracuse, and thence, by Messina, Naples, Rome, and Modane, I
arrived on 1 October 1917 in Paris, and from there a few weeks later I
joined the French front.


=10. Conclusions.=


_Geographical Results._—In the course of this lengthy statement I have
set forth in their respective places the principal geographical results
obtained during the last five years of my stay in Central Africa; but it
will perhaps be convenient to group them in a separate paragraph.

In the first place, the great geographical problem of ancient fluvial
communication between the basins of the Chad and the Nile is definitely
solved; the mountainous barrier encircles the basin of the Chad from the
Toummo Mountains on the north to the Djebel Marra on the south-east,
passing through the massif of Tibesti, the plateau of Jef-Jef, the
tablelands of Erdi and Ennedi, the hills of Zagawa, and the mountains of
western Dar Four.

In the second place, the lowest altitudes of the Chad basin are found in
the plains of the low-lying region situated to the north-east of Lake
Chad, which we have designated as “the Lowlands of the Chad.” The lowest
altitude, of 160 metres (about 520 feet), was found in the ancient lake
of Kirri, at a distance of about 250 miles from Lake Chad.

It is towards this low-lying zone that all the great valleys of the
hydrographic system of the Western Sahara seem to converge. It is to be
presumed that, such being the conditions, the tracing of a hypsometric
curve of 250 or 260 metres of altitude (that is to say, slightly
superior to that of the actual Chad) would fix the limits, in the region
of the Chad, the Lowlands of the Chad, and Borkou, of the ancient
Central African lake zone, the existence of which is proved by the
agreement of the geological, topographical, ichthyological,
malacological, and other observations made in these regions in the
course of the last twenty years. Are we to see in the remains of this
former Caspian of the Sahara the Chelonide marshes of the geographers of
the ancient world? To do so would not be altogether unreasonable if it
be taken into account that, so far as I am aware, there is not to be
found in the south-west of the Lybian desert any other low-lying region
combining conditions so favourable to the existence of a vast zone of
lake or marsh.

Again, if we bear in mind certain local traditions declaring that
towards the beginning of the nineteenth century native navigators were
able to go in boats from the Chad to the Lowlands of the Chad by the
Bahr el Ghazal (an assertion that the present appearance of Lake Kirri,
recently dried up, makes sufficiently probable), one may conclude that
until the early centuries of the Christian era this low-lying and now
completely waterless region of the lowlands of the Chad may have been a
great zone of lakes and marshes dotted with sandy or rocky
archipelagoes.

Other facts may equally be noted in corroboration of this hypothesis.
Firstly, the numerous layers of shells of river molluscs and the large
quantity of fish-bones to be met with there: among the latter a fragment
of a skull and vertebræ examined by M. J. Pellegrin, which he thought
were to be attributed to a Nile perch (_Lates Niloticus_, L.) of about 6
or 7 feet in length (in the _Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_,
tome 168, No. 19, p. 963. Séance de 12 May 1919); and the discovery of
an elephant skeleton in a region where neither grass nor water is any
longer to be found. Attention might also be drawn to the rock-drawings
of Yarda, where hippopotami are represented among horses, camels, dogs,
and ostriches; or to the numerous ruins of settled villages found all up
and down, especially where the Bahr el Ghazal falls into the Djourab.
Lastly, it may be mentioned that on the platform of certain rocks in
Borkou may be found great cemeteries that a native chief attributes to a
completely vanished race of “black Christians.” But our researches
revealed to us no trace or vestige of Christian religion, perhaps
because we could not devote enough time to them.

A third important result has been to reveal the geographical form of
important mountain masses like Tibesti and Ennedi, hitherto shown in a
very imperfect fashion on the maps of Africa, and the existence of
another important massif called that of Erdi, connecting the two above
mentioned. Moreover, the information we received permits us to reveal to
geographers the existence in the centre of the Lybian desert of yet
another mountain mass, the Djebel El Aouinat, situated about 150 miles
south-east of the oasis of Koufra, and of which the altitude probably
exceeds 4000 feet.

A fourth interesting result has been the precise determination of the
difference of longitude Paris-Faya by direct hearing of the wireless
time-signals of the Eiffel Tower. Numerous rectifications of the
positions attributed to various important points have resulted, the most
notable being that which throws more than 50 miles to the N.N.W. the
positions attributed by Nachtigal to Bardaï, the peak of Toussidé, the
valley of Zouar, etc.

A fifth important result is furnished by the discovery in northern
Borkou of the _Harlania Harlani_, which authorizes us to affirm the
Upper Silurian age of all the sandstone sedimentary formations of
Tibesti, Erdi, and Ennedi.

A sixth point will also, no doubt, be remarked by geographers: from the
peak of Toussidé that dominates the north-west of the Tibestian massif
to the Djebel Marra overlooking the plains of south-western Dar Four,
that is to say, for more than 800 miles in a straight line, numerous
hypsometric determinations have been effected which modify—sometimes by
several thousand feet—the altitudes of the chief summits of the mountain
chain that separates the basin of the Chad from that of the
Mediterranean: in Tibesti, Toussidé, 10,700 feet instead of 8200, Emi
Koussi, 11,200 feet; in Ennedi, the plateau of Erdébé, 4300 feet; in
Tama, the peak of Niéré, 4700 feet; in Dar Four, the peak of Dourboullé,
7200 feet, the Djebel Marra, 9800 feet instead of 6000. These figures
are given merely as an indication subject to the rectifications that
will follow the revision now proceeding of the summary calculations
rapidly effected during my journey.

Lastly, the establishment of the geographical liaison between the Niger,
the Chad, and the Nile, by a chain of astronomical positions determined
with very satisfactory exactitude, constitutes a seventh result, all the
more interesting in that it will permit the drawing up of four sheets of
the international map of the world, thanks to the 10,000 kilometres of
surveys traced by my collaborators and myself during this long
expedition.


From this geographical liaison allow me to pass to another kind of
liaison and say a few words on a subject I have particularly at heart,
and which is the conclusion not only of this five years’ journey but
also of all the journeys I have had the opportunity of making in Central
Africa since the beginning of the twentieth century,—I mean the
importance, I will even say the necessity, of Franco-British
collaboration in the great work of African civilization.

When I first set foot on the Dark Continent, in 1896, tropical and still
mysterious Africa was a subject of discussions and rivalries between
French and British colonials; but at the present time twenty years of
fruitful emulation have ended in a definite and final division of our
various possessions, and it seems to me that henceforth Africa is
destined to be the tangible pledge of the union of our two countries.

I believe that in England as in France a considerable number of
thoughtful men hold that it is above all to the African continent that
we must look in a very large proportion for the supply of raw material
and foodstuffs that we need. The question is whether it is more to the
advantage of France and England to co-operate as closely as possible in
developing these vast and practically unworked regions, or whether it is
preferable for them to pursue this object separately, each country
limiting its means of action to its own sphere of influence.

For my part, I hold that the answer is not doubtful: our two countries
should unite their resources for a loyal collaboration in this essential
work, so as to assure its complete success as rapidly as possible. I
know that the problem is no very simple one; but have we not solved
harder ones in the course of these last years, when for both our
countries the question was “to be or not to be”? And since it would
appear that the great and formidable economic struggle that is beginning
on the morrow of the victory is destined to be as keen, if not keener,
than the military struggle, it seems to me that the hearty, loyal, and
complete union of our efforts can alone assure us of success.

_The Trans-Sudanese._—It is an axiom henceforth beyond argument that the
utilization of the riches running to waste in Tropical Africa cannot be
seriously taken in hand until an adequate system of railways is
constructed. Allow me, in bringing this lecture to an end, to explain
what seems to me the most rational way of conceiving the general
programme of the African railways north of the equator.

In the first place, we must endow Africa with a great transcontinental
line from west to east, destined to ensure rapid communication between
the different French and British colonies bordering on the Sudan. I have
proposed for this railway the name “Transsudanese” (_Comptes Rendus_ of
the Academy of Sciences, vol. 169, p. 418. Sitting of 1 September 1919
(Gauthier Villars, Paris)); and its main lines, roughly indicated by the
natural features of Africa, and following the 13th degree of north
latitude, should include the following points:—

(_a_) Dakar and Konakry, starting-points on the Atlantic Ocean;

(_b_) Ouagadougou, Sokoto, Kano, Fort Lamy, Khartoum, crossing the
French Sudan, British Nigeria, the French territory of the Chad, and the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan;

(_c_) Port-Sudan and Djibouti, termini on the Red Sea.

Secondly, along this “Transsudanese” would be formed junctions at the
most suitable points, with local branch lines from the different French
and British colonies that succeed one another along the Atlantic coast
from the mouth of the Senegal to that of the Congo.

Thirdly, this railway system would be connected with the Mediterranean
ports—on the east by the Nile valley railway from Khartoum to Cairo; on
the west by a French “Transsaharian,” starting from the great bend of
the Niger and connecting with the railway systems of Tunis, Algeria, and
Morocco, and at some future time with that of Europe by a tunnel under
the Straits of Gibraltar, or simply by train-ferry.

Among the many reasons urgently in favour of the construction of the
Transsudanese, I will confine myself to stating what seems to me the
most important and perhaps the least known, the question of labour. For
it is generally agreed that the opening up of Tropical Africa cannot be
undertaken without the large co-operation of black labour. Now, for long
years to come four-fifths of that labour will have to be supplied by the
Sudanese populations, much less wild and much less indolent than the
great majority of the coast populations, and consequently better fitted
to lend useful aid to European enterprises. This Sudanese population,
which may be estimated at some fifteen millions at the lowest count, is
spread over more than a million square miles (4000 miles from west to
east from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, and 250 to 300 miles from north
to south, between the 11th and the 15th degrees of north latitude).

To recruit workmen scattered over such vast distances and convey them
without loss of time to the points where European enterprises are ready
to employ them, it is evident that an unbroken line of railway must pass
through the total length of the inhabited zone—that is to say, of
Sudanese Africa. And it is of supreme importance that this railway
should not have to take into account the political frontiers of the
various colonies passed through, and that its one concern should be to
traverse the regions in which the population is densest.

Such is one of the main considerations that fix the choice of the
itinerary and bring me to the conclusion that the Transsudanese—a work
of general interest in Africa, and more particularly a work of specially
Franco-British interest—ought to be undertaken without delay, and pushed
forward as actively as may be by the cordial co-operation of France and
Great Britain.

These remarks do not apply to the local railways of the different
colonies, though they may be expected to participate largely in the
traffic of the Transsudanese, either by carrying down the products of
the interior to the ports of the coast or by giving access to the
regions in need of development, and in which Sudanese labour will be
required. I am of opinion that these railways, limited as they are to
the particular territories of the several colonies whose economic
development they ensure, should continue to be constructed and managed,
as hitherto, by the colonies they serve: those colonies should bear the
expense of such local lines by their own financial resources, or by
those placed at their disposal by the mother-country.

As for the Transsaharian, destined to connect the railways of North
Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunis) with those of the Niger basin, I have
had the opportunity of saying in another place that it has become a
vital necessity of French colonial policy in Africa—a necessity that the
great war has proved to demonstration. For this reason I hold that its
construction should be regarded as a work of strictly national interest.
Still, a glance at the map will convince the observer of the profit that
will accrue to the British West African colonies, especially when it
becomes possible to cross from Europe to Africa without the
inconvenience of a sea-passage. I have often been met by the objection
that the Transsaharian “will not pay”; that it will be almost
exclusively a strategic railway, very laborious to construct, and very
costly to keep in working order. Such is not my opinion. The
Transsaharian, once the junction effected with the Transsudanese, will
connect two exceedingly rich regions—the Africa of the Arab and Berber
races and Black Africa. Between these regions a considerable commercial
traffic will arise, which will have an influence as great or even
greater than that of the Transsudanese itself on the economic
development of Africa; its receipts per kilometre will be as large if
not larger than those of the most favoured of the railways running from
the colonies along the coast inland towards the Sudan, for the
Transsaharian will be the direct means of penetration into the richest
regions of tropical Africa, not only from North Africa, but also from
the whole of Western Europe.


=1871-1919=


May I say one word about Tibesti and Borkou, and so conclude? Half a
century ago, when Nachtigal, after exploring the Tibesti, came to the
shores of Lake Chad, before setting out again to complete his work by
the exploration of Kanem and Borkou, he learnt by letters from Tripoli
the victories that his native country of Germany had won over France.
And again, when he returned to Europe after four long years of absence,
he found that peace had been made two years earlier, and that our
provinces of Alsace and Lorraine had become part of Germany and were
called the Reichsland; France, humiliated, was just finishing the
payment to the conqueror of the milliards that were to hasten the
liberation of her territory.

By a striking example of the way in which history sometimes repeats
itself, but with a difference, war was once more forced on France by
Germany at a moment when French explorers had just set foot in Borkou
and Tibesti in order to rectify, revise, and complete the unfinished
work of the German explorer! And the joy that filled the heart of
Nachtigal when he returned to Europe to find his country triumphant, and
her borders widened with the spoils of war, swells in our hearts to-day!
For it is Germany now that knows the humiliation of paying milliards to
obtain the liberation of her own territory, while the tricolour floats
over Metz and Strasburg, and watch indeed is kept, but to other music,
on the Rhine!

From this parallel, may I venture to conclude that in her treasure-house
of colonial jewels France may well find a place for arid Borkou and the
barren Tibesti. For would it not seem that they are, in some sort,
talismans, and that when Gaul and German grapple on the banks of the
great river that was set by nature and destiny to hold them apart,
Fortune, that wayward goddess, shall give victory to whichever country
has a son exiled in those mysterious regions, seeking, by rock and
desert, new ways across their ancient sand?

     [_Translated from the French by W. G. Tweedale, M.A., Oxon._]


Before the paper the PRESIDENT said: It is a special pleasure to us to
welcome here this evening that well-known French explorer and
geographer, Colonel Tilho. We had been long hoping to have the pleasure
of receiving him and of hearing an account of his recent journeys from
1912 to 1917, but owing to the press of official business he was not
able to come here in the summer, and it is only by the greatest good
fortune, and by the exercise of a little tactful pressure upon the
different Governments, that he has been able to be present this evening.
This is not the first occasion upon which he has been before the
Society. He gave us a most interesting paper about ten years ago, so
that he is not a stranger, and we are very glad to welcome him again.
What he will describe to us this evening will be his journeys in Central
Africa and the French Sudan between the years 1912 and 1917; and it was
for the valuable work which he did during those journeys and for his
general contribution to geographical knowledge that we awarded him, two
years ago, our Patron’s Gold Medal. I have, therefore, very great
pleasure in introducing Colonel Tilho to you and asking him now to
address us.


_Colonel Tilho then gave in French a summary of the paper printed above,
                      and a discussion followed._

The PRESIDENT (after the paper): Sir Henry McMahon, who was High
Commissioner in Egypt during part of the war, is present here, and we
shall be very glad if he will kindly make some observations in regard to
Colonel Tilho’s interesting lecture.

Colonel Sir HENRY MCMAHON: We are much indebted to Colonel Tilho for a
most interesting paper to-night. It is not only of very great interest,
but a valuable contribution to geographical knowledge. I will leave the
discussion of the lecture as regards its geographical and cartographical
aspect to others, but there is one portion of the paper to which I
should like to call your attention. As Colonel Tilho has told you,
during the war the Germans and Turks got a footing in Tripoli. He has
told you how Enver Pasha’s brother, Nuri Bey, landed on that coast, and
with him many Germans. Their object was to get into touch with the
Senussi; raise the whole country against us through the Senussi
influence, and threaten our western flank both in Egypt and the Sudan.
They very nearly succeeded; and if our brave allies, the French, had not
forestalled them in the country described to-night, they would
undoubtedly have established themselves there. It is a valuable
objective as being the first place in which water and supplies can be
got after leaving the oasis of Kufra. We will imagine for one moment
that they had established themselves there. You can at once see what a
dangerous focus of intrigue and unrest, what a source of danger it would
have been on our flank all along our western front. Having forestalled
the enemy there, no further trouble ensued, but our friend the Sultan of
Darfur, who misjudged the time of the Senussi arrival and counted too
confidently on their aid, had already started hostilities with us, and a
war ensued which in times of peace would have attracted wide public
attention but in the days when our interest was so concentrated on other
fronts it almost escaped notice. Suffice to say that by a brilliant
series of military operations, our troops, under the direction of Sir
Reginald Wingate, the Sirdar of the Sudan, drove him out of his capital
and took the whole of his country. If the Senussi had at this time been
established with their German and Turkish assistants on our flank, it
might have been a very different job indeed. I look upon this incident
as an object lesson of the good that co-operation can effect in a work
of this kind, and it is, I hope, not only an object lesson of what has
been done in the past times of war, but an augury of what we can do and
should do between us in the future times of peace. As Colonel Tilho has
explained to you, co-operation is essential for the development of this
great country of Africa, and I trust that it will be the guiding
principle of our two great nations not only in the development of that
country, but in furthering the welfare of the backward peoples placed
under our guardianship.

The PRESIDENT: The French Military Attaché is present and we should be
very pleased if he would kindly address us.

General the VISCOMTE DE LA PANOUSE: Je ne savais pas que j’aurais à
prendre la parole ce soir en sorte que je me trouve un peu pris au
dépourvu. Je vous demanderais donc la permission de m’exprimer en
Français. Il y a quelques vingt ans, il eut été impossible de discuter
ici dans une atmosphère de calme et de confiance mutuelle une question
relative au centre du Continent Africain. Heureusement depuis cette
époque, grâce aux bienfaisants accords de 1904, les malentendus entre le
Royaume Uni et la France se sont dissipés, l’Entente Cordiale est née,
elle s’est développée et elle a vu son couronnement dans une alliance
militaire étroite et loyale pendant la plus grande guerre que le monde
ait vue. Le Colonel Tilho vous a exposé pourquoi dans le développement
économique de ce Grand Centre Africain, l’action unie des deux grandes
Nations est nécessaire sous peine d’aboutir à un gaspillage inutile
d’efforts et d’argent. Mais je vois aussi une autre raison pour laquelle
nous devons travailler ensemble; l’Empire Britannique et la France ont
lutté pendant cette grande guerre pour faire triompher les principes du
droit et de la liberté contre l’oppression et la barbarie. Notre
victoire nous a créé des obligations et en particulier celle de défendre
les populations noires contre la tyrannie des marchands d’esclaves et de
l’oppression des sectes musulmanes et de leur donner le bien-être auquel
a droit tout être humain. Ce devoir ne sera utilement rempli que si nos
nations s’entendent sur les mesures à prendre et les réalisent en
commun. La belle œuvre d’humanité à accomplir sera ainsi un nouveau lien
entre les deux Grandes Puissances qui se partagent le continent
Africain.

The PRESIDENT: We have been fortunate to catch Sir Harry Johnston. He is
one of our greatest authorities upon Africa generally, both Central and
Northern. We should be very glad if he would make some remarks.

Sir HARRY JOHNSTON: I had the honour some years ago, just after the war
had started, of showing you a somewhat similar map of Africa with
railways designed on it partly by my own fancy, and I may say to a great
extent by following French fancies too; for about that time I had been
in the north of Africa, and had been allowed to pursue for a certain
distance the tracing of the projected trans-Saharan railway, the
progress of which was only stopped by the war. I conceived then the idea
that it was of the highest importance to Western Europe that that line
should be made, though I, like most of you, did not appreciate the
influence on affairs that the submarine would have; but of course that
conviction has been strengthened by the events of the war. Had we had
the trans-Saharan railway in existence during the war we should not have
suffered as much as we did from the loss of some of the most important
materials for our industries caused by the interruptions of the sea
routes, the destruction of steamers, etc. It is a matter of absolute
necessity, I consider, that that trans-Saharan line should be made to
link up the valley of the Niger with French North Africa, and further
with Western Europe; because, as Colonel Tilho has pointed out, the
channel between Tangier and the Spanish coast could be easily patrolled
and kept free of submarines, and even crossed by train ferries. Then
another point I should like to raise is as to the further exploration of
those Tibesti highlands and the lofty plateaus that are connected with
them on the north-west and south-east. Colonel Tilho did not mention in
his discourse what he said to me privately, that he had found in some
parts of that region, possibly Borku, fossilized bones of elephants. He
has referred to the native legends and to the drawings on the rocks
which point to the existence of hippopotami in regions now entirely
devoid of surface water. He showed some of these engravings. They are
very similar to rock drawings which can be traced right across the
Sahara desert, exhibiting a fauna now completely passed away. One reason
why Tibesti should be explored is, that we might find there the fossil
and semi-fossil remains of a very extensive tropical African fauna,
because that isthmus of high land between the south of Tunis on the
north, and Darfur and the regions round Lake Chad on the south, seems to
have been the principal route by which the fauna of Miocene and Pliocene
Europe and the Mediterranean basin reached Tropical Africa. There are
more and more indications that the Sahara desert to the west and the
Libyan and Nubian deserts to the east were formerly under water, and
therefore checked the progress of beasts and man across the Sahara into
Central Africa; but this high ridge always remained well above the
limits of such lakes, marshes, or inland seas. Tibesti was a well-
watered region with at one time quite a heavy rainfall down to about
twenty thousand years ago.

Before the war suspended such enterprises, the savants of France were
exploring the wonderful sub-fossil remains of Algeria which revealed to
us the existence there of a mammalian fauna resembling that of modern
tropical Africa, of the region south of the Sahara. With that fauna were
mingled in a very interesting degree creatures which at the present time
are restricted to India. For instance, there was something so like an
Indian elephant that it might be called the Indian elephant, existing
almost down to the human period in Algeria. There was a wild camel, an
equine resembling a zebra; there were gnus, hartebeests, oryxes, and
other types of modern African antelopes; and there was a Tragelaph
allied to the Nilghai; there was a huge buffalo with almost incredible
horns—14 feet long—incredible were it not that its existence is proved
not only by its fossil remains but by the drawings of primitive man. The
Foureau-Lamy Expedition, I believe, found many of the dry torrent-beds
of the elevated Ahaggar region choked with hippopotamus bones. There is
everything to point to quite a recent and rapid change in the climate of
the Sahara, which, well within the human period, was a region abounding
in water derived from a heavy rainfall, and richly endowed with forest
areas, as we may see from the remains of petrified trees. This will
bring home to you what gains might come to science and to our knowledge
of the evolution of life on this planet if we could only thoroughly
explore the Sahara, and above all such regions as the Tibesti highlands.

Major HANNS VISCHER: Just after I had crossed the Sahara, some years
ago, I had the great pleasure to meet Colonel Tilho in Nigeria; and last
time we met—I think in 1909—to celebrate our homecoming in Paris, we
spoke of the work in Africa of our two respective countries. During my
journey, and whenever I met the French in those regions, I was
particularly impressed by the difficulties and privations these officers
suffered so cheerfully. In Nigeria we had our railway, and we got
frequent leave. As I remembered those isolated posts in the heart of the
Sahara, while looking at the pictures we saw to-night, separated by
hundreds of miles, rarely getting a mail or any provisions from the
coast during those long years of war, when few boats went to the West
Coast of Africa, I was filled with admiration for the work done by
Colonel Tilho and his comrades. In the course of his lecture the Colonel
showed clearly how necessary it is for us to co-operate in Africa, not
only for the welfare of the native people but also for the very
existence of our respective colonies. He has shown to us to-night how
well we can complement each other. When that German-Turkish column
advanced south across the desert, at a moment when we had sent most of
our troops from Nigeria to East Africa, it would have been a hard thing
for the people in our colony if the officers under Colonel Tilho’s
orders, assisted by some native troops sent north from Nigeria, had not
been able to arrest the enemy’s progress.

The PRESIDENT: I know you will all want me to congratulate Colonel Tilho
on your behalf on the lucid, graceful, and humorous lecture he has given
us this evening. There has been great talk about the co-operation
between us and the French, and I think we might go a little deeper even
than that. When we can get a French officer like Colonel Tilho over here
in the flesh, and can hear from his own lips what he has done, when he
shows us pictures of the kind of country he has had to make his way
through, the kind of people he has had to make friends with: when we see
all that, certainly we who have had to do similar work in other parts of
the world—and probably you at home, even though you have not had that
great pleasure and honour, must have a very deep fellow-feeling with him
and his compatriots—we feel that there is something deep and common
between us when we realize so vividly the work that they are doing, the
difficulties that they have had to encounter, and the great work of
civilization and humanization which they are carrying on in these far
remote recesses of Central Africa. We have had to do the same things
ourselves in other parts of the world. We see the results of our own
efforts, and Colonel Tilho this evening has shown us what the French
have done in opening out the great arid wastes of the Sahara desert and
the French Sudan. What they have done and what we have done is good for
the world as a whole. It has all been opened out gradually in the course
of years, not only for the French and not only for the British, but for
all nations. Therefore we here in England, we in this Society, will send
forth a very hearty word of congratulation to the French, and especially
to Colonel Tilho, for the great work which they are doing in Central
Africa. He has made very important geographical discoveries, and has
referred to new methods of geographical observation. Wireless telegraphy
for the purpose of determining longitude is a comparatively new method,
but one which is vastly valuable, because, as we who have tried to
determine longitudes in far-away places know, in old days it was
impossible to get the longitude at all exactly. We could get the
latitude fairly accurately, within a few hundred yards, but longitude we
could never get to within a few miles. Now by means of wireless
telegraphy we are able to get longitude with almost complete exactitude,
even in the heart of the French Sudan. Colonel Tilho has also made a
slight allusion to another modern invention which I think in future will
prove of great service, and that is the aeroplane. We shall hear more of
that at our next meeting; but when you see those vast waterless regions,
when you hear from Colonel Tilho of the enormous difficulty in getting
across them with camels, then we see of what use the aeroplane might
have been made for preliminary geographical reconnaissance. Those two
inventions, I am certain, will be of enormous service to geography. I
now wish on your behalf to tender to Colonel Tilho a most hearty vote of
thanks for his lecture this evening, and also for his great kindness, at
considerable personal inconvenience, in coming across from Paris to give
us this paper.


FOOTNOTES:


[Footnote 1: A sort of camp-followers whose business in life is warfare
in all its branches except that of fighting: experts in all manner of
desert craft, scouts, flank-guards, finders of strayed camels or sorely
needed wells. Swift to detect the incompetence or bad faith of local
guides, they form the necessary complement to the fighting strength of
any expedition in Central Africa.]

[Footnote 2: This account will be published in the next number of the
_Journal._—ED. _G.J._]



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77071 ***